Anyone freeze tomatoes?

[suesam]

Is freezing tomatoes worth it? I usually can tomato soup, and whole tomatoes which I love but am not going to have time to do it for a while because we are going to be gone for a few days Freezing is my only option unless I let my tomatoes rot in the garden. Eeeek.

Any tips or suggestions?

Sue

 

[Hophop4]

I have done this in the past and then use them for cooking.

 

[Janie]

Freezing ripe tomatos works just fine!

We freeze a bushel or so every summer to use throughout the winter. All we do is wash them, put them in freezer bags, and throw them in the freezer. They are great for soups, stews, sauces, etc. We just throw them in the microwave to thaw: after thawing, they give off a lot of excess water can be discarded and you can very easily peel off the skins.

They wouldn't be usable for anything where you needed to hold their shapes, as they pretty much distintegrate into tomato mush when they are thawed.

 

[Bwolf]

We just froze a batch that we boiled-down. Sorta halfway to sauce. We will boil-down another batch, add the first, and complete making sauce.

 

[vacationhopeful]

As kids, we lived on stewed tomatoes from frozen, skinned & blanched tomatoes from the family garden.

None of us 5 kids ever died - although that was our argument/plea every 2nd day when that dish was put on the dinner table.

 

[Ann-Marie]

I have been freezing tomatoes for a few years now, ever since I had a huge abundance of them. In the winter, I throw them all in a huge pot and make sauce, cook meatballs, and then freeze into individual dinners. I add tomato paste to thicken the sauce because the tomatoes are very watery. After they have stewed for several hours, I throw the whole pot in batches into the blender. It works great.

 

[MULTIZ321]

Linda,

Thanks for a great laugh! Brought back childhood memories.


Richard

 

[sfwilshire]

We prefer to can ours, but when we have less than a full batch, we also freeze them. They are just fine for cooking. Maybe even fresher tasting than the canned ones. We just don't have enough freezer space.

Of course, this year we had very few tomatoes and what we have are tiny. Never leave a 20yo in charge of watering during a drought.

Sheila

 

[stmartinfan]

I freeze mine using a technique recommended by the guy at the farmer's market stand where I buy tomatoes. He often sells some of his odd ones very cheap for canning or freezing. His method is to dip them for a few seconds in boiling water to make it easy to remove the skin, then to cut them into small pieces. I measure out 1 cup amounts and freeze in small freezer bags. Then I can just dump the amount into my chili or other recipe.