Sep 2

Sep 2 3 Easy Ways to Preserve Tomatoes for the Winter

When I realized there were easy ways to save and preserve all of the fresh garden tomatoes we started planting more plants! When your garden is producing more than you could ever eat it’s time to save as many tomatoes as possible for the winter. All of these ways to save tomatoes are easy! Pull out the big baking sheets and let the dehydrator and freezer do all the work of preserving the tomatoes. Plus we added a savory way to roast and save the tomato harvest to save yourself dinner prep time in the weeks to come. These are the three easiest ways we’ve found to save all the fresh garden goodness without giving up all of our time, no long days of canning needed!

Click on the image to watch the full How To Video for each of these preserving methods. You can grab all of our Favorite Kitchen Tools Here and if you need more Dinner Inspiration here’s Our Cookbook and Red Tin Treat ECookBook

Did you know that when you purchase from our links or our shop and when you watch our videos you help fight human trafficking! It's true, years ago we decided to use our everyday life as a way to fight against slavery and trafficking. Since then we started hosting the Freedom Dinners and when our business started we knew we wanted it to give back too. We donate 10% of all of our profits to ⁨@AtlasFree⁩ to fight for those that cannot stand up for themselves. We’re so glad we get to bake and garden, fill our tables and use the beauty of our everyday lives as a powerful tool for hope!

The EASIEST of All: Freezing

Yes, you can freeze your tomatoes whole from the garden. From itty bitty cherry size to the large beef steak size, all of them can be frozen. We wash and clean ours, pat dry and lay out on baking sheets to allow them to freeze individually. Once frozen we transfer them into freezer bags or containers. Now you have individually frozen tomatoes! You can pull out the exact amounts you want any time over the winter to add to soups, stews and sauces.

All you need is a big colander to wash them in, a large rimmed baking sheet like these and big freezer bags.

Make Your Own ‘Sun Dried’ Tomatoes : Dehydrating

Fill your freezer with whole tomatoes is so lovely, until you run out of space! So break out the dehydrator and let it do the work. If your tomatoes are cherry size or larger cut them in half or quarters and lay them skin side down on the dehydrator trays. Set to 125 degrees and allow to dry until the tomatoes are still soft but just barely sticky.

We use these ‘sun dried’ tomatoes in all sorts of sauces, reconstituted and added to dressings, salads, sourdough bread and more. They’re packed full of flavor and take a fraction of the space in the freezer.

Pan Roasted Tomatoes

The last way that we preserve our tomatoes is by roasting big sheet pans filled with them. For 1 sheet pan worth of tomatoes I add in:

1-2 tablespoons of Olive Oil Drizzled over the mixture
1 large onion, cut in large wedges
4 cloves of garlic
3 sprigs of fresh oregano
7 sprigs of fresh thyme
Coarse Salt Sprinkled over the top of the pan

Roast at 400 for 40-50+ minutes, until the tomatoes are cooked down and the liquid from the tomatoes is reduced by 2/3rds. The larger the tomatoes the more liquid there is to cook off, stir every 15ish minutes to encourage more liquid to cook off!

Once the mixture has cooled you can store this in your fridge for a couple weeks. Or put in freezer bags and freeze until you’re ready to add the mixture to stews and sauces over the winter!

Let’s be Tomato Twins ;)

As soon as I saw these t-shirts I KNEW we had to have them. We’re thrilled to be partnering with Sauce Town! Use our link for 10% off your purchase you’ll find me in the garden and kitchen picking tomatoes, wearing tomatoes, roasting, freezing and drying tomatoes!