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I have recieved a windfall of tomatoes, gifts from 3 different people, bless their hearts. I lost nearly all my tomatoes to blight. I don't want to waste any of these tomatoes so I need to preserve them. I do not know how to can and I do not have the equipment it requires so I will have to freeze he tomatoes. What is the best way to do that? I have never tried it before.
Congratulations on the good score. I've not frozen tomatoes so not much help but I've never used a pressure cooker to can tomatoes. If you have jars/lids and waterbath canner you can put them up.
Wish I had had a better crop, I was wanting to dry some this year but no extra.
I can look up the freezing info but am sure someone will be along to offer assistance.
Congrats on your gift.
I've frozen alot of tomatoes. They have a better flavor.
I use a canner full of boiling water dump the whole tomatoes in. after the water returns to boiling I dip them out with a drainer, Than immediately drop them into another pot(or the sink) filled with ice water. The skins will slip right off. Then i stuff them into quart freezer bags. and freeze. There is only me to cook for so you might elect to use larger bags. I don't add salt.
Vickie
This is way too late for Cajun, but I have a tomato machine that separates the skin and seeds from the pulp; they're not expensive and they make the job a lot easier. I cut my tomatoes up and cook them first until they start to break down a bit, and then I put them through the machine. After that I cook them again and reduce them by about half, before putting them in quart freezer bags. A friend just scoops off the thin liquid at the top but I prefer to keep it all! Each quart bag holds about a pound of the purée. I don't add any spices or herbs to them because I prefer to wait until I know what I'm using it for.
if ya have another windfall this year, know this, you can just throw them in straight off the vine and dip them in boiling water to slip the skins when you need them. Use those first and save the bagged ones for later. It beats letting them spoil cuz ya dont have time to fool with em!
We used to dip green tomatoes in vinegar water, dry and layer with brown paper (from grocery bags) or newspaper in a bushel basket or cardboard box (not more than two layers) and keep in the basement. When we wanted to use some we would bring them upstairs and put in a box with a couple of apples or (if we had any) a banana. Usually we used apples because we had them in fairly large suppy. They would start ripening slowly, so we always had some tomatoes in some stage of ripening. We could usually have red tomotoes for salads (or just eating) until around the first week of January, or so. I loved doing this because I loved fried green tomatoes and this extended my fried green tomato eating for several more weeks. I also just love tomatoes. We also stored apples, beets, onions, celery and carrots in the basement. We had an old bathtub that I put some clean river sand in. Whenever we use beens, celery or carrots I would take the top slice (or the bottom for celery) and plant it in that tub and a new beet, carrot or celery would start growing. It was alway nice to have those beet greens for salad or a vegetable. We lived out in the country in southern Michigan so we didn't get as much in the way of fresh produce in the winter time back then
