Tomatoes

Happy Labor Day, everyone!  Today I'm going to share an awesome food hack.  You see, before we left for vacation, I had to make sure that I picked everything I could from the garden, in the hopes that I wouldn't come home to 50 pounds of produce.  (I was wrong on that, but I digress.)  The San Marzano tomatoes were finally ready to be picked, but I was leaving in a couple hours. There was no where near enough time to make sauce.  And I wasn't going to bring them on vacation with me, since I already had more than enough for our week at the beach. (Confession: I brought too many and had to make cook some into sauce so they wouldn't go to waste.  Busted.) But then I remembered a tip I heard a while back.  

Freezing tomatoes whole to cook later.  

What?!

What kind of sorcery is that and does it actually work?  I figured it was as good of a time as any so I washed them and put them in a freezer bag, then popped the whole thing in the freezer.  

After I returned home, my garden had exploded in abundance again and I picked another 40 pounds of tomatoes.  It was crazy.  And definitely time to make sauce! As with any good experiment, I decided to use these tomatoes as my control group and figured it was time to see how the San Marzanos would cook up.  I threw them straight in the pot, frozen solid and said a prayer to St. Lawrence, the patrol saint of cooks.  ( I added a little water to the pot, too, since I didn't want to scorch them before they thawed completely.)

They still look delicious, even frozen!

Even more scientific, I divided the fresh tomatoes into two batches.  For all the tomatoes, I left the skin on and seeds in and cut the fresh ones into large chunks.  Despite all the kitchen gadgets I have, a food mill isn't one of them.  I can't decide between a low-tech hand mill or a fancier electronic one, so I haven't bought any.  

Typically when I make fresh sauce I take out the seeds, cut them into large chunks and spend a considerable amount of time picking out pieces of tomato skin.  Looking for a new technique, I took the golden heirloom tomatoes and turned them into a raw sauce using the immersion blender.  Then, I used my food processor to pulse the remaining red varieties of tomatoes into a chunky sauce.   I'll also add that I don't put anything in here except plain old tomatoes.  Since I'll be using this sauce for a variety of recipes I like to keep it as close to the vine as possible.

I wasn't the only one getting in on the fun, my little helper is always on the counter helping me out!

Now it was time to wait.  The two pots of fresh sauce came to a boil pretty quickly, so I reduced them to a simmer and let them do their thing.  The frozen tomatoes were different.  The water at the bottom of the pot seemed to be a smart addition, and the bottom tomatoes turned into tomato water balloons.  I popped the first one and the texture seemed fine.  Definitely runny but since it was making sauce that doesn't matter.  I like how the pulp was a bit chunkier too since that would add a great texture to the sauce.  And bonus!  The skins came off intact so I could pluck them straight out of the pot as I popped them.  It took a good 20 minutes of me stirring before they were all ready to be popped and skinned.

Since all the machinery went away, so did my help.  Except for Doggie, who was left napping on the unfinished windowsill.  

After a couple hours, once all the tomatoes were cooked down, it was time to compare.

Look at the beautiful color of this sauce!

The golden heirloom sauce that I pureed with the immersion blender had a silky uniform texture.  Since these tomatoes are sweeter, so was this sauce. The seeds were visible, but I didn't mind them, and there wasn't any annoying skin to pick out.  On the whole though it was a little too smooth.  I like a sauce with nice hunks of cooked tomato in it.  Still, I don't think anyone would turn their nose up at this sauce.  This would taste great on a pizza with some spicy sausage and fresh mozzarella.

You can still see the seeds in this but the skins were blended in smooth.  

The red sauce was practically perfect.  Nice consistency and flavor plus larger chunks of tomato.  Again, I didn't find the seeds to be an issue but there were some larger pieces of skin to pick out.  They were right at the top though so easy to grab.  I'm glad this is a big pot since I'll use this as a base for a lot of Sunday sauces.  This sauce begs for you to dunk some crusty bread right into the pot!

The sauce we've all been waiting for.

Finally, it is time to see how the frozen tomatoes did.  They were great!  The San Marzanos are a drier tomato so once they were thawed this sauce cooked up quicker than the other two.  Overall, this might be my favorite new way to make sauce.  Sure, it was a little more tedious to pick out some of the smaller pieces of skin, but the fact that I can make sauce when I want and not when I need to is awesome.  

Once all the sauces had cooled, I put them into ziplock freezer bags in 2 cup portions.  I freeze them flat so they're easy to store and each one is about the same size as a can of tomatoes.  Whenever I need one for dinner, I can easily take one out and it thaws in no time.  Depending on the dish, I sometimes add it straight to the pot still frozen.  Right now, I have over three dozen bags in my freezer!  It's been a good season! 

Verdict: If you have tomatoes that need to be cooked immediately but you don't have the time, this tip is a game-changer!  The food processor is a good choice too, but I probably won't use the immersion blender again.

Tell me! Have you ever cooked up frozen tomatoes like this?  Am I crazy for having so many tomatoes?