Freeze Your Tomatoes

Our tomatoes have started to ripen and, before long, I know we'll have an abundance.  So, I wanted to share a preserving technique I found last year that worked really well and requires no special equipment.

Always before, I have canned my excess tomatoes.  This requires a water-bath canner and heating the kitchen up for a couple of hours during the hottest part of the year.  So, last year, I decided to experiment with other ways of preserving them.  I tried drying them and documented that in the following blog entry.  

http://windyacresnaturalfarm.blogspot.com/2012/08/drying-tomatoes.html

Of course, this requires a dehydrator of some sort and, while dried tomatoes are somewhat of a delicacy, I found that I rarely used them.

The other method I tried was one I liked far better and that was to freeze them.  Here is the process I used.   First, wash them thoroughly.

Then, cut the stem end out along with any blemishes or bad spots.  You do not have to peel them.  

Next, cut them into quarters and put them in a food processor.

Blend them in the food processor until they are chopped into tiny pieces.  In the mean time, set a colander inside a large bowl.

Cover the colander with a large dish towel or cheese cloth and pour the chopped tomatoes into the colander.  You want to drain a lot of the water out of the tomatoes.

Set this in your refrigerator for an hour or so.  In fact, you can leave it overnight.  When you remove the colander, you'll have a good amount of juice.  Don't waste this.  It is good to use in soups and stews.

Fill freezer bags with the chopped tomatoes, label and freeze.

I used a lot of these in chili last winter and they worked great!  Tom does not like, in his words, "big chunks" of tomatoes.   So, if I use canned tomatoes, I usually put them in a blender and give them a quick whirl before adding them to chili, soup and so forth.  So, blending them and freezing them like this saves me a step.

Also, you do not have to thaw them before you use them, although it saves on cooking time.  If you forget to thaw them ahead of time, you can go ahead and add them to the pan frozen. You'll have a solid chunk that you'll have to scrap on with a spatula or large spoon as it thaws until you can break it into pieces.

A pint freezer bag filled with tomatoes processed in this manner holds a lot more tomatoes than a 16 ounce can because there is not as much juice.

Finally, don't waste the stems, cores and bad spots you cut out of the tomatoes.  These  make good compost ingredients.  Also, chickens love them!