How to Freeze Tomatoes

As you might expect, freezing whole tomatoes is a bit easier and less time-consuming than putting blanched and stewed tomatoes on ice. The first thing you need to do is select your tomatoes. After ensuring your chosen fruits are firm, relatively fresh and unblemished, wash them in the sink under running water. You shouldn't use any soaps or detergents (you'll be eating these tomatoes eventually, after all), so just rub the surface of each tomato clean and then rinse it off again. Avoid dunking the fruits into a sink full of water. Even if you just filled the sink, the tomato's skin and stem car can absorb lurking bacteria and other contaminants. After you finish rinsing them, blot the tomatoes dry with a paper towel.

After your tomatoes are clean and dry, slice away their brown stem scars and place them on a cookie sheet. Put the cookie sheet in the freezer uncovered for several hours until the tomatoes are frozen. Then, transfer the tomatoes into freezer bags and seal them up, ensuring there's little to no excess air in the bags. Stash them in the freezer until you're ready to make a sauce or stew.

A frozen tomato's lifespan is usually around eight months. As with any batch of frozen food, to ensure they last as long as possible, package them in bags or containers specifically made for freezing. Also, make sure your freezer remains at or below 0 degrees Fahrenheit.

Freezing whole tomatoes works great in some cases, but varieties of tomatoes with thick skins, such as the Roma, will ruin stews, sauces and dips with their excess flesh. Blanching tomatoes is more complicated and time-consuming than freezing them whole, but they often retain more flavor after freezing than their whole-hided kin. In the end, we think the end result is worth the extra time investment.

To blanch tomatoes, you'll need:

If you have a fryer basket that will fit inside both the saucepan and the pot of cold water, you can use that instead of the tongs or spoon.

Begin by bringing the water in the saucepan to a boil. While you're waiting, remove the stem scar from the top of each tomato, then make a small X- or cross-shaped incision on the underside of each one. Drop the tomatoes, three or four at a time, into the boiling water. It should only take a little while for the skin to soften (typically between 10 seconds and a minute, depending on the size consistency of the tomatoes).

After the tomatoes' skin becomes loose or pliable, remove them from the saucepan and promptly submerge the entire batch into the ice water. Keep them submerged for a few seconds — long enough to cool — then peel the tomatoes by hand or with a knife. Start peeling the tomatoes from the incision you created earlier and work your way up. Place the blanched tomatoes on a paper towel or clean cloth to dry. Then, put them on a cookie sheet and follow the steps for freezing whole tomatoes.

Preparing stewed tomatoes for the freezer requires plenty of steps, but the results are well worth the labor. Before you can stew tomatoes, you've got to blanch them. Besides all the supplies you'll need for blanching (refer to the previous page), you'll require an additional pan, cooking spray or butter and whatever extra ingredients you'd like to add to your stewed tomatoes.

Yes, we said extra ingredients. Because you're actually cooking the tomatoes before freezing them, the rule we mentioned about adding spices, veggies and herbs after your tomatoes have thawed doesn't apply here. You have the option of preparing the stewed tomatoes so they're ready to thaw and serve as a side dish, or you can cook them and add the extras later. As for what to add, we like garlic, onions, zucchini and peppers.

Not taking into account any extras, this is the basic process for stewing tomatoes. Once you've blanched them, quarter the tomatoes or chop them into large chunks. Warm your pan, and coat it with cooking spray or butter. Add the tomatoes; cover and cook for 10 to 20 minutes. Place the stewed tomatoes in cold water to cool, then pour them into freezer-safe containers until you're ready to make a meal out of them.