freezing tomatos

[Martha27]

has anyone ever tried freezing tomatos? I'm talking just cutting them into quarters and putting them in a freezer bag. how long would they last? I have so many tomatos in my garden and just dont have time to learn all about canning or time to make all kinds of sauce to freeze right now. i am hoping i can just freeze the tomatos and then later on make sauce with them. also cherry tomatos: can i just freeze those whole? would that work?
thanks!

[fireweed]

Yes, you can definitely freeze tomatos. If you want the skin off, blanch them quickly to make it easier to peel the skin off. Quarter them, and freeze them in a single layer on a baking sheet for a few hours. Then you can put them in freezer bags. I've never done cherry tomatos, but I can't see why that wouldn't work.

[happysmileylady]

My mom and I blanch them so that the skins split, then they are super easy to peel off, then she has this chop thing that dices them in one swoop, so we do that, then put them into 16oz freezer containers. Through the winter, we use these in place of canned diced tomatos. If you don't have/can't find one of those dicer chopper thingies (I haven't a clue what it's called) I am sure you could just quarter or half them and shove them in the containers that way.

[mamadelbosque]

canning tomatoes is *SO* easy. This is literally *ALL* I do:

wash them.

core them.

dice them.

pack into quart jars.

add 1/2-1tsp salt

pressure can for 10minutes at 10#s pressure.

Tada!!! SOOOO easy!!!!

[Alyantavid]

I freeze lots of tomatoes. The simplest way is to wash, cut the ends off and toss in the freezer. When you thaw them out to use them later, the skin slips right off.

I've also roasted them and frozen them.

[Llyra]

Yeah, you can freeze them plain. When they thaw, the skins slip off easily. That said, you will protect the flavor and the vitamin content better if you blanch them briefly.

You can also just toss them in the blender or food processor and puree them (take the stem end off first) and then freeze the resulting puree. We did that two winters ago with our tomatoes, and it worked great. This works even better if you can peel them first, though-- just drop them in a pot of boiling water for a minute, to loose the skins.

[baby-makes-3]

Wow, I'm shocked to read all the success of freezing tomatoes.

I tried this several years ago and was left with pithy tomato juice when I thawed.

Maybe I will try again -- I nearly killed myself constantly making sauces to freeze last year when the bumper crop came in!

eta: I wanted to mention that this year, I've been on a dehydrating kick and have dehydrated a bunch of tomatoes -- haven't actually used any yet, as they're in my freezer, but it def. takes up less room!

[damona]

i just did this the other day! my mom gave me 3 grocery bags full of slightly squished or otherwise imperfect tomatoes from her garden and i don't have any canning jars at the moment.

so i washed and cored them, cut an "x" on the bottom, dunked them in boiling water for a minute or so to slip the skins off, then lined them up on trays in the freezer (funny story: i ran out of room in my freezer so i took the last tray over to my SO's mom's place around the corner. she was sleeping but he said it was fine, so i put them in her freezer. she woke up in the morning and i got a text that said "what the h*ll is in my freezer?? it looks like a tray full of hearts!").

once they were frozen solid i put them into a big ziploc bag and stashed them in my freezer. i know there will be more and i plan to collect them until the end of tomato season.

i figure when i get the jars i'll thaw them and cook them down, put it through the food mill to remove the seeds, then i'm going to can spaghetti sauce and ketchup.