Time to preserve tomatoes. So you’ve grown some superb tomatoes but now you find you can’t eat them all! What do you do with the surplus? Well, you could give them away to your relatives and friends and, no doubt, you will with some of them and they will think what a great gardener you are!
They will also think kindly of you for your generosity! However, this highlights one of the problems of growing your tomatoes. If you plant all your tomatoes at once you will be harvesting them all at once, too!
So staggering your planting will help to overcome that problem partially. You will still be harvesting more than you can eat, though, so what to do with the surplus.
Firstly, your home grown vine ripened tomatoes will store in a cool place for a week to two weeks and keep fresh. So, you know how many tomatoes you’re eating put some aside for current use and then decide whether you are going to sun-dry, freeze or preserve the remainder.
Sun-drying is great as you can store your wholly sun-dried tomatoes for long periods or even semi-dry them. These are terrific in salads as the process of semi-drying (basically evaporating some of the water out of them) concentrates the flavors so you get even more flavorsome tomatoes.
Freezing tomatoes is also a popular option. There is a bit of work involved but you will always have tasty tomatoes to make your pasta sauces and casseroles in the winter.
The hardest thing about freezing tomatoes is getting them peeled but there is even a secret to this which makes it easy. It involves dunking them in boiling water for about a minute and then transferring them to a waiting bowl with cold water or even with some ice in it.
After peeling, simply transfer them to your freezer containers, plastic bags or what have you. They will certainly last through the winter chills and provide you with superb taste, vitamin C and lycopene. What more could you ask for! For more details on the process check out the website mentioned above.
Another method of storing your tomatoes is bottling. Many Italians use this method as it is just as much a cultural thing as it is related to food. In other words it is a family and friends get-together while they have a big cook-up and bottle the surplus from the summer.
If you have a big plot of tomatoes this is a proposition. There is even an Australian company which sells a bottling kit (you can use it for tomatoes or for fruits and other vegetables).
Finally, rather than let your tomatoes go to waste, you can make jams and relishes with them. People who lived through the Great Depression did this all the time as money was scarce and nothing was wasted. Besides, they are much healthier for you than commercial examples – check out the labels for all the additives – and are tastier to boot! The process is simple. All it requires is a bit of time and the ingredients.
If you want other ways to eat them fresh or cooked, here’s a simple recipe my mother used to make with somewhat overripe tomatoes. (She lived through the Great Depression and wasted nothing!)
Simply cut up the tomatoes and chop up an onion or two. Add some chicken stock and bring to the boil. Simmer until ready. If you’re fussy you might want to peel them first. A second alternative, of course, is to use some of your frozen ones. We used to have that as one of our meat and three veggies when I was growing up! Another alternative would be to use them for a salsa dip. The possibilities are endless!
Good growing.
