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Post by brownrexx on Jul 20, 2019 11:31:34 GMT -5
Do you freeze whole tomatoes for use in cooking over the winter? I do and it works wonderfully well.
I pick my nicest, most perfectly shaped tomatoes, usually Big Beef and I wash and dry them and then freeze in Zip Loc freezer bags. I love adding these to things like chili, soup or a pot of dry beans.
I just remove a tomato or two from the freezer and run it under lukewarm water for a few seconds and the skin slips right off. I cut the tomato while it is still frozen or it will turn mushy.
Do you do this?
 20180207_151129 by Brownrexx, on Flickr
 20180207_151415 by Brownrexx, on Flickr
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Post by paulf on Jul 20, 2019 11:42:44 GMT -5
We do both, freeze whole and cut up pieces
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Post by octave1 on Jul 20, 2019 12:34:08 GMT -5
No. I find that uncooked tomatoes change flavor/texture if frozen raw. They are also too watery.
I freeze tomato puree which I make by stewing cut up fresh tomatoes, and straining the product through a food mill.
The result is a very tasty, almost indistinguishable from garden fresh tomato puree that can be used for just about anything.
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Post by Gianna on Jul 20, 2019 12:40:37 GMT -5
I sometimes freeze whole tomatoes and they are very handy. I'll just toss them whole into whatever I want. Havent tried the peeling while frozen trick, but I like the look of it.
Unfortunately my freezer space is limited and those lovely frozen round tomatoes take up more space than is there. Because of that, I'll usually process the extra tomatoes in some way. Either drying or cooking them down either alone or with chilies.
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Post by brownrexx on Jul 20, 2019 13:54:20 GMT -5
I freeze tomato puree which I make by stewing cut up fresh tomatoes, and straining the product through a food mill. I do this for the tomatoes that I use to make my pasta sauce which I make during the summer and freeze in quart jars although I drain them in a colander instead of using a food mill. Before I did this my spaghetti sauce used to separate on the plate when served over spaghetti. I finally figured out that cooking and straining the tomatoes before using them in the sauce corrected this problem. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 20, 2019 20:48:09 GMT -5
We do this from time to time, but the big drawback is that whole tomatoes take up more room than they should=---If tjey were square and would pack neatly this would be a much better process.
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Post by pepperhead212 on Jul 20, 2019 23:17:29 GMT -5
I do this, and actually, I froze a good number of them today, just because I had so many, I HAD to do something with them! And what I do is put the larger ones in the bags, and fill up the air space between them, with cherries! While they do get watery, and there's no way you can use them exactly as you would a raw tomato, I often use them in things like guacamole, draining a little of the water off, before chopping up, which tastes much better than with any store-bought tomatoes. And many of those soups and curries I make call for a medium to large tomato, chopped up, and I just peel the skin off, and chop them up semi-frozen still, then dump it into a bowl. The juice in it isn't lost, this way. And something that tastes almost as good using frozen tomatoes is gazpacho. The texture is not a problem there.
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Post by Laura_in_FL on Jul 21, 2019 8:34:46 GMT -5
I have done this, when I didn't have time to make a tomato sauce but had to do something with a bunch of ripe tomatoes.
I washed and cored them before freezing. I didn't only use the perfect ones, but I did carefully remove any blemishes from the imperfect ones.
Out of the freezer they can be easily peeled and then chopped when semi-frozen like Dave said. Or they can be thawed, run through a food mill, and cooked down for sauce. When using frozen tomatoes for sauce, I like to thaw them in a colander first. The liquid that comes out is basically water and almost tasteless. So draining it off saves a lot of cook time, and I don't think you lose much in terms of flavor.
But as Oxankle said, whole frozen tomatoes take up a lot of freezer space. So mostly I have frozen whole tomatoes as a stopgap when I didn't have enough time (or tomatoes) to make a batch of sauce that day. Either way, I've usually used whole frozen tomatoes pretty quickly because I needed the freezer space.
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Post by pepperhead212 on Jul 21, 2019 9:39:38 GMT -5
This is one of the things that I was cleaning out my freezer for! However, I have a section that I will fill up, and that's it - no more, as I may end up with them still there next year! I never did this with tomatoes, to see about how many I use before the next season, but I used to have so many peppers left over in the freezer that I weighed the different types I'd freeze, for 3 years in a row, and how many I'd have left over. After that, I figured the average that I used, for the various types, and just froze that, plus 20%. This way, I wasn't using up that space with something that I would not be using.
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Post by brownrexx on Jul 21, 2019 9:45:49 GMT -5
Yesterday I let the chickens out of their coop all day and they stayed in the shade of my holly tree until evening. I gave them a pan of water under there and some watermelon rinds which they love. Then I remembered that I had a quart container of chopped tomatoes in the freezer from last year. I am picking fresh tomatoes now so I don't need 1 year old ones. I dumped the block of frozen tomatoes on the ground under the tree and as it thawed they pecked at it and had a great time. There is not even a single seed left on the ground now. It was like a tomato popsicle.
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