Freezing Tomatos

[Romy Beeck]

I know you can can tomatos but can you freeze them instead? I hear you can boil them and put them in freezer bags and freeze them. Can anyone help me out? THANK YOU

[Warren]

Well, you could freeze whole tomatoes, but even with careful thawing, they'd come out mush. You could use them for cooking, but you wouldn't want to just eat them no matter how carefully you thaw them. I'd advise mashing them down when freezing to minimize the air in the container, but not so much that they're going in already as mush. You might consider pealing, and removing the seeds, depending on the variety.

Each year I make tomato sauce, and freeze it in 1-qt. disposable containers. It's easier than canning, but you need to have enough freezer space. When rearranging my freezer to make room for this year's batch, I found a container from 2002. Thawed it out, and made dinner with it. Still better than store-bought sauce.

[gregpresley]

[dr-solo]

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[N. Thornton]

isnt it a risk to freeze things without boiling them first?

NT

[Janet Baraclough..]

The message from [e-mail] (N. Thornton) contains these words:

Blanching (not boiling) is required for food that's been grown on an agricultural scale, sprayed with who knows what, and machine processed in a factory full of people.There's more risk of contamination in industry. The blanching also delays enzyme degradation.

Food you've grown yourself,preferably without chemical contamination, picked yourself in peak condition, with clean hands into a clean bowl, rinsed or wiped, and frozen within minutes of picking, doesn't need blanching ime. I've been safely freezing without blanching for years. Home-frozen veg and fruit that hasn't been blanched, has far more natural taste than factory frozen.

Incidentally, when you take out the frozen whole tomato, if you run it under a warm tap the skin will just slip off in your fingers, making the sauce or soup look better.

Janet.

[Warren]

No. Virtually nothing in my freezer was boiled before freezing.

Boiling, or more likely par-boiling, may be used for certain products to help preserve color or texture, but it won't help for tomatoes. It would, however, be appropriate for vegetables like green beans, peas, corn, etc. Generally if you can buy a vegetable frozen, par-boiling before freezing would probably be appropriate.

If you intended to peal the tomatoes before freezing, par-boiling would allow you to remove the skin without removing the meat, but it's not necessary.

As for the safety aspect, even for the vegetables that you would par-boil, it has nothing to do with safety. A brief bath in boiling water isn't going to do anything that a brief bath in cold water wouldn't also accomplish safety-wise.