Why You Need to Freeze Tomatoes Without Peeling Them First
“Too many tomatoes” is not the problem I’m facing now, as I don’t have a garden in which I could grow any tomatoes at all (I think the problem is much worse than too many). But I know a lot of people who are currently overwhelmed by the sheer amount of love apples their backyard plants grow, and obviously “eating more tomato sandwiches” is not an aggressive enough mitigation plan.
Obviously, such a wealth of tomatoes can be canned or turned into a sauce , but the easiest and laziest way to preserve them is to put them in the freezer. In fact, it’s even easier and lazier than I originally suspected: according to the editors of Joy of Cooking (who are very smart and very nice), you don’t even need to clean them up:
Basically, this is the opposite of a banana, which needs to be peeled before it goes into the freezer, unless you want to get very disappointed with the banana at some point. (I mean, peeling a frozen banana is impossible; it’s just not ideal.) It also means that peeling it will be even easier than the usual “cut the tiny cross and blanch” method, which was pretty simple anyway! All you have to do is freeze them on a baking sheet – a baking sheet will do – and then place them in a freezer bag. After defrosting, the skin will slip off immediately, no blanching is required.
The entire posting of “tomato glut” is worth checking out as the editors at Joy are chock-full of tomato advice, including good advice on using the sad, substandard tomatoes, which are somehow abundant in Oregon this year. (If you’re faced with an avalanche of low-quality tomatoes, don’t worry – we’ve shared many methods you can use to make them taste better .)