Food Preservation: Freezing Fresh Tomatoes

I know! Freezing your tomatoes?

Years ago I was led to believe that refrigerating your tomatoes destroyed the flavour – which is not entirely untrue, but I did not understand the entirety of it.

Ripeness Matters

An unripe tomato that goes into the fridge will interrupt the ripening process and flavour development will likely be affected. Most tomatoes you buy from the store were picked before they even began to reach the blush stage and refrigerated to ensure they would ship well and last long on the shelf.

Once the tomato is fully ripened, you can refrigerate it without having any impact on quality or nutritional value.

Vine Ripening

Vine ripening is a myth… kinda. Once the blush stage has been reached, a tomato is considered “vine-ripened”. Let me explain:

Fruit reaches the “breaker” stage once the fruit has blushed, i.e. a pink colouration has appeared on 10-30% of the fruit. Once the blushing occurs, the stem of the fruit seals off within the vine so no additional nutrients are being provided to the tomato.

At this point of blushing, a tomato can be harvested without impacting the flavour and nutrition of the final product. This has been scientifically proven! Not only that, they did blind taste tests and people could not tell if it ripened on or off the vine.

Pick Your Tomatoes Early

Have you ever had a tomato almost PERFECTLY red and ripe on the vine just waiting for you? Then you go out to finally pick that beautiful tomato and it’s gone? Or it’s been picked at by an animal?

That beautiful red colour on your tomatoes not only attracts people, but it attracts birds and other critters who might want a tasty tomato snack. Picking early ensures you don’t have to compete with animals for your hard earned tomatoes!

Not only are you preventing pests from entering your garden, the tomato will actually last longer if it’s picked earlier. Once that tomato gets softer as it ripens, it’s very prone to splitting, bursting, and bruising, which will impact the shelf life of your tomato.

Frozen Tomatoes

Once you freeze the tomato, the water within the fruit will separate and crystallize. This process will make you unable to use your tomato as a “fresh” tomato for slicing. However, pulling a frozen tomato from the freezer and chopping it up for a recipe to cook it is like using fresh tomatoes! Once it begins to cook, the water will separate from the tomato flesh anyways, so there is no difference in flavour or texture.

You can use frozen tomatoes in canning! If you have an abundance of fruit all at once or you find them on a good deal, you can freeze them until you’re ready. The best part is the water will separate from the tomatoes as they thaw and you can drain them. This means you don’t have to cook them as long to reduce the final product – which will save nutrients due to less cook time.

How to Freeze Your Tomatoes for Optimal Storage

1. Rinse your tomatoes well under cold water until all of the dust and pollen are gone. With home grown tomatoes this is just a quick rinse, but feel free to wash store bought tomatoes more thoroughly.
2. Cut off any blemishes and remove thick stems/cores of tomatoes. Some tomatoes will have a firmer stem scar/core depending on the variety. I typically do not remove the stem scar on san marzano tomatoes but will remove them on regular roma tomatoes.
3. Allow the tomatoes to air dry or dry them with a clean kitchen towel. Wet tomatoes will bring additional moisture into the bag and cause crystallization.
4. Arrange the tomatoes in a single layer in a large ziploc bag or vacuum sealable bag.
5. Remove excess air. If you are using a regular plastic bag, seal 90% of the bag then use a strong straw (not disposable) to suck out the remaining air. While still removing air, slowly extract the straw and quickly seal. If using vacuum sealer, follow regular directions but do not let the tomatoes to squish/flatten. You don’t need to remove all of the air.
6. Store in your freezer flat as shown in the photos, stacking them as you add more tomatoes to your freezer stash.
7. Use tomatoes as desired! Pull individual tomatoes out for recipes or thaw overnight in the bag on the counter (on a tray in case of leaks) to use in canning or tomato sauce recipes.

Some of my favourite recipes you can use frozen tomatoes in are Bolognese, Minestrone, and more! (more coming soon)