Juicing and Freezing Tomato Juice.

[karstopography]

So, the plan for later today is to juice some ripe tomatoes I have in surplus, this to freeze the juice for later use.

The goal is to have fresh tasting tomato juice free of seeds and skins available in the freezer for when I might want some for a recipe.

The means I plan on employing to achieve this goal is a hand crank food mill, a fine sieve, a collection container, a waste bag and elbow grease. Then I plan to put the seed and skin free juice in quart zip bags to go into the freezer.

Questions I have are, one, is it really necessary to quarter and core tomatoes, place those into a hot water bath to soften them? The tomatoes seem soft enough without the added hot water pre-softening step. Second question is there any reason to include additives such as lemon juice or citric acid if I have no plans to can the juice?

[worth1]

Quartering the tomatos will help.
I see no reason to add acid to the juice since it is going in the freezer.
The freezer won't allow Botulism spores if any to grow.

[Paulf]

We have gone away from canning tomatoes and tomato products in favor of freezing for at least twenty years. We do whole tomatoes, chunks and juice with or without seeds, all of them in freezer bags. None of it gets cooked or hot water bathed. We do cut out the white cores on the chunks just because it works out better. Everything gets cooked later anyway. I will drink the seedless juice sometimes after it thaws...tastes pretty good but I do add salt for that. Haven't got sick once.

[worth1]

I've also found that in my opinion many of the things people use a vacuum sealer for is a waste of money and time.
Like soups and so on.
All your trying to do is remove air from the package or bag.
Things that are liquid or close to it don't need to be vacuum sealed.
You are basically accomplishing nothing.
Another thing I do is wrap meat in cling wrap then put in another bigger bag.
In the old days we used to freeze fish in water in a freezer container.
This eliminated freezer burn.

[JRinPA]

We freeze fish in water but that didn't start until the last 10 years or so. Never really froze fish before that. Ground meat is fine in freezer paper, postal wrapped. Scrap or chunks for grinding, freezer paper okay. Steaks and whole muscle for steaks, vacuum sealing is 100% the way to go for us. Then wet aged for 10 days before freezing. I wouldn't even know how to vacuum seal soups, not with my sealer. It would suck up through the bag. Unless you mean special pricey containers with a hose connection?

tomato questions
1. quarter and core and hot ? Depends on the mill if you need to quarter. Core is up to you. Heating before milling, I don't do that. I use a victorio 250 with the little motor. The throat is maybe 2" so if they fit, great, I just pluck any green leaves and drop it in. Most tomatoes are too big so I will use a melon baller to scoop the stem (core?) and then rip it apart with my hands and feed in the chunks. Or scoop and halve or quarter with a knife. But never hot, that is a pain.
If I really want all the juice I will break out the champion juicer. For canned soup I will run basil and onion through the juicer - I don't want any chunks to threaten the pressure sealing process. But for freezing tomato juice like you describe, I would just mill it and not even use the juicer. Much more throughput with the mill.

2. I would not add acid for freezing.