Hello Eileen!
Saturday August 03 1996 05:25, Greg Mayman wrote to Eileen Steenburg:
 -=>> Eileen Steenburg mumbled something to All <=-
 -=>> on 13 Jul 96  22:00:00 about "tomatoes" <=-
 ES>> I've heard that Tomatoes can be frozen.  I usually can them, but
 ES>> am curious to know if anyone else has heard of freezing them.  If
 ES>> so, what is the proper procedure to do so? Thanks
It isn't so much a matter of proper procedure, as convenience. If you think 
you're going to want to use them as puree afterwards (iced summer tomato 
soup) then just puree and sieve them, and stuff them in suitable sized 
containers. (It might be sensible to wash them first before pureeing 
obviously). I sometimes do it by putting plastic bags into cream or yoghurt 
pots, pouring in say 1/2 pt of the puree, freezing, then taking the bags out 
and sealing them before putting them all into a large labelled polythene bag. 
That way they don't wander all over the freezer, you just can't find any at 
all! :-)) I've seen it said here that you can feeze them whole with the skins 
on, and that the skins come off easily on thawing. I can't speak to that with 
authority as I've never tried it.
I have to say that my preferred method of preserving tomatoes is by canning, 
as you say. I peel them, halve and deseed them and them salt them for an hour 
so that they exude excess moisture before chopping roughly and canning in 1 
pound equivalents (the amount of tomato that was 1 pound before preparation). 
As most of the recipes I use call for tomatoes in that conditon (called 
concassee in french cooking) I find that it's by far the easiest procedure in 
the long term, even if it can be quite slow to concassee 12 lbs of tomatoes.
 GM> Blanche the tomatoes in boiling water for about 30 seconds,
I can only say that if you use fully ripe tomatoes, ripened on the vine, 8 
seconds blanching in boiling water is ample to loosen the skins.
 GM> remove them and put them immediately into iced water to chill
 GM> them.
We just use water at cold tap temperature. It's done to stop the tomatoes 
cooking in any way.
All the Best
Ian
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