Learning How to Freeze Tomatoes has been a great way to preserve my abundance of tomatoes from my garden.
Freezing tomatoes is SO much easier in my opinion than canning and takes much less time and effort.
Some years I find that I have so many tomatoes from my garden that I didn’t know what to do with.
When I learned how to freeze tomatoes, I realized that I had found a simple way to keep those tomatoes to use in the winter months for some of our favorite recipes – like this creamy tomato soup or any other recipe that calls for tomatoes.
I just use the frozen tomatoes instead of the canned tomatoes the recipe calls for and it works great!
Can you freeze tomatoes?
If you have an overabundance of tomatoes that you are not going to be able to eat before they go bad, you might want to consider freezing tomatoes as a way of preserving them so you can enjoy eating fresh produce all year long.
We eat a lot of tomatoes during the growing season and have given away a ton to our neighbors over the years.
But it seems like I am always looking for the best way to preserve tomatoes in order to save them to use later in the year.
Our Food Preservation Guide will help you to know if you should choose canning, dehydrating or freezing your produce for the best results.
Canning is one of the options that you can use to preserve tomatoes, but I learned that freezing tomatoes was even easier for me.
How to Freeze Tomatoes
Follow the steps below to learn the basic steps to freezing fresh tomatoes.
Blanching tomatoes by dropping them into boiling water for 60-90 seconds and, using a slotted spoon, transfer immediately into a bowl of ice water to cool. Skin will slip easily from the flesh.
Once the skin has been removed you should remove stems and core tomatoes.
You can leave the tomatoes whole but if you cut them or crush them you’ll maximize your storage space.
Using a large spoon or measuring cup add the tomatoes to freezer storage bags. Pint or quart sized freezer bags work best.
Seal the bags making sure to push out as much air as possible so they don’t get freezer burned.
How to Store Frozen Tomatoes
Store your bags of tomatoes flat so you can add more items to your freezer.
Freezing tomatoes will help them to retain flavor for 12 to 18 months.
That’s all there is to it!
More Freezing Food Tutorials
If you like this article on how to freeze tomatoes, you’ll like these ones too:
- How to Freeze Butter – Freezing butter is easy and can be a great way to save money while giving your family healthy genuine butter for the average price of margarine.
- How to Freeze Cheese – Just like with other dairy products including milk and butter you can freeze cheese to extend the lifespan of the staple food.
- How to Freeze Milk – You can freeze lots of dairy items like milk, cheese and butter to make it last much longer than the expiration date printed on the package.
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