Our tomato harvest has been somewhat disappointing this year due to two plagues:
Our yield has been severely diminished due to those things. My homework over the 'off-season' is going to be researching to find a way to get rid of those pests without spraying pesticide all over the tomatoes that we want to eat. I planted 80 tomato plants (7 different heirloom varieties) back on January 1 and the pests have gotten the upper hand. I'm not a quitter, though. I'm going to learn how to defeat them. Beware stink bugs and worms...
We already showed you different things we do to can tomatoes and eat them fresh. Today, I'll show you how we blanch them and then freeze them individually.
Here are a couple of platters of tomatoes that are ripening indoors. I started picking them a little on the green side to get them away from the stink bugs and worms.
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| Tray #1 |
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| Tray #2 |
Now we put them in a pot of boiling water and wait for the water to return to a boil.
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| Putting the tomatoes in the hot water bath |
Once the water returns to a rolling boil, we might leave them in for an additional 30 to 45 seconds or so.
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| Rolling boil |
We dip them out with a slotted spoon and immediately dunk them in an ice water bath to stop the cooking process. Blanching stops the enzymes that contribute to color, texture and taste problems. You'll notice in the photo below that the skins of the tomatoes have wrinkled and some are started to peel off.
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| Wrinkled tomato skin |
We leave the tomatoes in the ice water for a few minutes until they've cooled completely. Then we pull them out and the skin will easily peel off of the tomato. We throw the skins in the compost bucket. If you have some tomatoes whose skin hasn't wrinkled, slit the skin a little with a knife to get it started. The skin will come off after that.
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| Skinless Tomato |
Next, get a sharp knife and core the tomato by cutting out the stem and the hard center of the tomato.
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| Coring the tomato |
We line up the skinned, cored tomatoes in a baking dish, but any tray will do. What we're aiming for is to freeze them individually. Put them in the freezer overnight.
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| Lined up in the dish and put in the freezer |
We'll generally stack them up. You just have to be careful when opening the freezer door. Tomorrow we'll continue.
After 24 hours we remove the frozen tomatoes, get a spatula and pry each tomato up individually.
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| Frozen whole tomatoes |
Then we place them individually into gallon size freezer bags and put them back in the freezer.
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| Ready for the next recipe calling for tomatoes |
Whenever the next recipe calls for tomatoes, we reach in the freezer, unseal a bag and grab however many we need and reseal the bag. Between fresh, canned and frozen tomatoes, we're set! If I can get the stink bugs and worms to share with us, we'd be in business!
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