I love fresh veggies and summer is a fantastic time to enjoy them straight from the garden. I am lucky enough to have a friend who has given me many garden fresh tomatoes each week. But isn’t it terrible when the tomatoes go bad before you can eat them??? To help prevent wasting such yummy tomatoes, I went to Pinterest and found the instructions on preparing them for freezing. It’s a fantastic way to save the freshest tomatoes for later use. These are the instructions I followed for freezing my fresh tomatoes.
The first step is to get some water boiling on the stove. The amount of water and size of your pot will depend on how many tomatoes you have. Use a pot big enough that the tomatoes aren’t crowded and enough water for your tomatoes to float. Wash the tomatoes while the water is heating. Once the water is boiling, place each tomato into the water. I suggest using tongs so you don’t splash boiling water on yourself!!
Keep your eye on them and remove the tomato once the skin splits. Each tomato will split at different intervals. Some may take a little longer but they will eventually split.
The tomato skin will peel off easily. I suggest waiting for approximately 15-30 minutes to allow the tomatoes to cool.
The skin will come completely off with very little effort. You can use your hands or tongs to peel the skin off of each tomato.
Next, remove any dark spots and any sections of the tomato that you wouldn’t eat such as the bottom tip and the core at the top. Finally, you will have completely stripped tomato.
I set my tomatoes on a plate but you may choose to put them in a bowl so that it is easier to contain all the delicious juice that will be coming out of the tomato as you cut it because you definitely want to keep it.
At this point, it is completely your decision on how to prepare and store the tomatoes. I cut my tomatoes into smaller pieces to use in a soup later. Loads of juice began to accumulate on my plate and I was wishing that I had put my tomatoes in a bowl before I started cutting them. My entire kitchen smelled like a ripe tomato so my mouth started watering!!!
I have not yet learned to can/preserve vegetables so I chose to place my tomatoes in a bag and freeze them. They won’t last long in my freezer because now I am craving a beef stew full of fresh vegetables.
There are many different ways to blanch tomatoes. Some different instructions state that the tomatoes should only boil for 30-60 seconds and another suggests cutting a small X on the bottom of the tomato before boiling. I did not try these alternative options with this batch of tomatoes but I will be trying them with each new batch of tomatoes that I receive.
My next endeavor will be to learn how to can/preserve fresh vegetables correctly so that I do not inadvertently poison myself with botulism.
Do you have any tips for using or saving fresh vegetables?
