The Easiest Way to Preserve Tomatoes

The easiest way to preserve tomatoes might surprise you…It’s freezing! This two-step process will get your tomatoes preserved for later use fast and fuss-free!

Fresh garden tomatoes

There’s nothing that makes you feel food-rich quite like a basket of fresh garden tomatoes. They bring such bright colors and flavors to the kitchen, but they also bring fruit flies.

During gardening season, my counters are filled with an abundance of produce needing preserved. After canning beans, dehydrating herbs, and shredding zucchini after zucchini, I need a way to get the tomatoes off my counter quickly! They can split and bring bugs in no time.

Freezing them is fast, easy, and preserves their beautiful color and flavor for the entire off season before the next fresh tomatoes start rolling in!

Why is Freezing the Easiest Way to Preserve Tomatoes?

The most popular method for preserving tomatoes is canning. While canning does provide a ready-to-use product that is shelf-stable, canning does take time. If you don’t want to spend half of gardening season working away over a canner after washing, blanching, peeling, coring, cutting, and straining your tomatoes, you might want to consider a different method.

The easiest way to preserve tomatoes really is freezing because it takes very little time, and requires no additional equipment beyond a bag to freeze them in. After prepping them for the bag, you can pull them out as needed any time during the year ahead. Once thawed, the skins come away easily. This means that you can whip up fresh sauces quickly without straining skins or blanching to remove skins!

My other complaint with other preservation methods is the flavor loss that happens with canning or dehydrating. Canned tomatoes take on a slightly different flavor that is by no means bad, but after I tend these little garden jewels for months, I want to continue the freshness of flavors for as long as I can! Freezing helps me to do that.

What Can Frozen Tomatoes Be Used For?

Frozen tomatoes are incredibly versatile. You won’t use them the same way as a fresh tomato, but beyond that they are a convenient ingredient for your favorite tomato recipes.

Since the skins come off easily after thawing, they can be used in place of canned diced tomatoes, used to make sauce, or added to your favorite soups. If you’ve never tried fresh tomato soup in the winter, this is the perfect recipe to use your frozen tomatoes in!

One way we love using them is in Spanish Rice! They get thawed, peeled, and chopped up before adding them to our rice. It’s a welcome pop of color in the winter!

Another fantastic recipe is my Easy Summer Pasta Recipe with Fresh Garden Vegetables. We miss this dish so much when the garden is put to bed for the year, but with frozen tomatoes on hand, I can whip this up all winter long with those vibrant, freshly-flavored tomatoes. My family doesn’t even know the difference!

Pasta dish with fresh garden vegetables

Is It Better to Freeze Tomatoes Whole or Chopped?

If you really want the easiest way to preserve tomatoes, get them off the counter, and into a preservation method, I would leave them whole. If you want to freeze them chopped, you’ll probably want to go through the process of peeling them first.

You need to peel tomatoes for most other preservation methods. To peel fresh tomatoes, they need blanched, then dunked in an ice bath. After that, the skins come off rather easily. However, this process is time consuming and often messy.

If you freeze your tomatoes whole, the skins slip right off once thawed. Then you can dice them for your recipes.

After the tomatoes are thawed, you can also remove the flesh from the seeds easily. The frozen then thawed tomatoes are much softer than fresh tomatoes, and won’t hold onto the seeds as much. I like to squeeze the seeds and skins right into the bag before pulling them out for my recipes.

How Long Will Tomatoes Last in the Freezer?

Most will tell you that tomatoes last in the freezer for up to six months. I usually plan to have enough in the freezer to get me through the end of gardening season, up to my first fresh tomato in the following year’s garden. This is more like 10 months on the long end.

The tomatoes don’t go “bad” in the freezer, but they do obviously decline in quality as they lose nutrition over time. The worst thing I have had happen is a bit of ice forming around the tomatoes in the bag. If you can remove enough air, you can almost entirely avoid this even after storing them for 10 months.

The Easiest Way to Preserve Tomatoes: How to Freeze

Wash the tomatoes thoroughly. I will usually fill up one side of my sink and drop the tomatoes in to make it easy to clean up when I’m done. If your tomatoes are mostly clean, this is just a quick rinse that will get off any extra juice or dust. However, if your tomatoes are especially dirty, use a clean rag to wipe them clean in the water.

Place the tomatoes on a dish towel to dry. This step is not necessary, but will help to avoid them sticking together in the freezer.

Use a small paring knife to core the top of the tomato out. If you are using a sauce tomato like a Roma or San Marzano, you can usually just slice off the top where the stem is. Larger slicing tomatoes still work well for freezing, but you may have to take out a larger core section. You’re looking for the green/white pithy part to remove.

Fresh tomato being cored for the freezer
Cored tomatoes ready to be frozen

If you are planning to pull out a whole bag of tomatoes at a time to thaw, you can put bag them up and put them straight in the freezer. However, if you want to be able to pull out one or two tomatoes at a time, flash freeze them first before bagging.

To flash freeze your tomatoes, lay them on a cookie sheet on a sheet of parchment paper. Make sure they are not touching so that they do not stick together. Place them in the freezer on the parchment lined sheet flat and freeze until solid (4 hours or so)

Once frozen, place in bags, remove air, and label for future use.

How do I Thaw Frozen Tomatoes for Use?

When you are ready to use your frozen tomatoes in the kitchen, pull them out of the freezer to thaw. They don’t take long to thaw out if you are using them a few at a time, but a whole bag will obviously take a while longer. You can thaw in the fridge overnight, or in the sink under cool water (in the bag).

Tomatoes being frozen in freezer bags

Once thawed, the skins will slip off the tomato easily. The skins and seeds can be dehydrated and ground for tomato powder to use in place of tomato paste, or fed to your backyard flock of chickens! We do both here.

In the bottom of your thawed bag of tomatoes will also be excess tomato juice. This can be used in your recipes right away, or put back into the freezer for later use. You can use the extra tomato juice for sauces, broths in soups, to steam veggies, or to cook rice.

If you don’t want seeds in the recipe you are using the tomatoes in, you can squeeze these out after they thaw. They come away easily after being frozen and thawed, unlike when they are fresh.

fresh garden tomatoes that need an easy preservation method

The Easiest Way to Preserve Tomatoes: Freezing

The easiest way to preserve tomatoes might surprise you…It's freezing! This two-step process will get your tomatoes preserved for later use fast and fuss-free!
Prep Time 15 minutes
Total Time 15 minutes
Serving Size 1 Gallon

Ingredients

  • Ripe fresh tomatoes
  • Gallon freezer bags
  • Sharp paring knife

Instructions

  • Wash your tomatoes thoroughly
  • Allow to dry on a clean dish towel to avoid sticking in the freezer
  • Using a paring knife, cut the core out of the tomato
  • Place on a parchment lined cookie sheet to flash freeze
  • Once solid (about 4 hours) add to your labeled freezer bags
  • Return to the freezer for up to 6-12 months of use
  • Thaw in fridge overnight, or under warm water in the bag
  • Slip off skins and squeeze out seeds before use
  • Use for canning or recipes as needed

Notes

Save skins & seeds to dehydrate for tomato powder or to feed chickens!
Thawed tomatoes will leave behind juice that can be saved for future use!

Pin for Later!

pinterest graphic for preserving tomatoes fast

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