One of my favorite things to do with excess ripe garden tomatoes is to freeze them whole. Yes frozen whole tomatoes, it’s as easy as it sounds! I love this because it doesn’t require any cooking, chopping, peeling, canning, and so and so forth. This is perfect when the season comes when your knee deep with tomatoes and you don’t want them to go to waste. It’s quick, easy and you will thank yourself later for doing this. When you don’t have to buy canned tomatoes for a whole year, it’s awesome.
I’ve received several requests exactly how I freeze the tomatoes, so here is my simple step by step.
First select your ripe tomatoes, don’t worry if they have any imperfections you can always cut them out later once they are frozen. But do make sure they are ripe to be eaten/or frozen that day. If you don’t have enough for a whole bag, that’s ok, just freeze as you go.
Wash each tomato individually,
and remove the stems.
Place the clean tomatoes on a towel to dry.
Then hand dry each tomato
and place in a freezer bag in a single layer.
Then seal up the bag leaving a 1 inch opening, and pinch it open and with your mouth suck out as much air as you can. The less air the better.
Place in your freezer on a flat surface till frozen.
After the tomatoes are frozen they are very easy to peel, chop and use in any recipe that calls for canned tomatoes. The texture of the tomato changes once it’s frozen so it best to use in only cooked recipes. Here are a few of my recipes featuring frozen tomatoes: Huevos Rancheros, Spaghetti Puttanesca, and Eggs in tomato sauce.
Have you ever frozen tomatoes?
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I’ve never frozen tomatoes. My father told me a good trick for taking air out of baggies. Use a straw!
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What a neat idea!
Thanks, Sweet Pea!
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Thank you thank you thank you!!! Our tomatoes are finally producing good and we’ve gotten quite a few over the last day or two. Can’t wait to give this a try!
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I just froze some tomatoes my father in laws garden last week but I did get the idea from you since I had seen it on your blog in the past!
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How do I love thee, let me count the ways,….lol….
one tomato, two tomato, three tomato….ha ha ha.
How funny that I posted about being worried about my tomatos, and you make a post about too many tomatos. You rock.
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I’ve done that and you’re right – they’re so great to have through the year and freezing is MUCH easier than canning!
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p.s. I’ve given you an award. Come and get it.
http://bettycrapper.blogspot.com/2010/07/blog-with-substance.html
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SO glad you posted this, and that it sounds easy! Do you have a kind of freezer bag that seems to be good?
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Huh! I will have to try this:-)
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Thank you so much for sharing the instructions! I’m hoping we will get enough out of the garden to give this a try—if not, I may have to go to the farmers market to have some on hand at a good price!
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I had no idea you could freeze tomatoes! Last year we had so many that I was literally standing on our street corner handing them out to people who were out walking with their families!! I’m gonna try freezing them this year!
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Hi! This is my first visit to your site, and I am really enjoying it! I didn’t know you could freeze ripe tomatoes. And I didn’t know you could freeze tomatoes at all until last year, when I learned about freezing green ones, for Fried Green Tomatoes. I think I ended up with about 20 (not stuffed) gallon bags of green ones in the freezer. I’ve used a few of them, but still have plenty. My family thinks they’re great that way, but I don’t care for the texture it gives them. Although, it’s not that bad on the thinner sliced ones. I am very anxious to try freezing the ripe ones! Canning is such a chore, and even par boiling is too. This looks so simple, and doesn’t heat up the kitchen!
I’m also going to try the Sticky Chicken in the crockpot! I love having precooked meat on hand for recipes! Thanks for the great info!
xoxo
Shannon
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how cool is that! I had no idea that you could freeze tomatoes like that!
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Yay!!! I just did the same thing with fresh basil, and now I’m going to do it with tomatoes, too. I do use the straw trick, too. My husband thinks I’m crazy, but it works.
Question, have you ever used these tomatoes in salsa? I love to make salsa yearround, and I do puree them with cilantro, peppers and several other ingredients.
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