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It's Tomato Season! Here's An Idea To Preserve Them To Use All Year

Author:

Eliza Sullivan

June 12, 2020

mbg Nutrition & Health Writer

By Eliza Sullivan

mbg Nutrition & Health Writer

Eliza Sullivan is a food writer and SEO editor at mindbodygreen. She writes about food, recipes, and nutrition—among other things. She studied journalism at Boston University.

Image by Ewa Fournier le Ray / Unsplash

June 12, 2020

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Tomato season is in full swing. While the season is pretty long, winters are often spent cooking from canned tomato products. But while it's a bit easier to get our hands on fresh, flavorful tomatoes, why not try preserving them for use in the colder, less tomato-friendly, months?

While there are multiple ways to do so, this abundantly simple preparation from The Ultimate Guide to Preserving Vegetables sets up your tomatoes to become the base of sauces, side dishes, and more. While the recipe calls for certain accompanying vegetables, herbs, and spices, this method of preservation can be adapted with the flavors that you like to use in your tomatoey dishes.

Not only will they likely taste better than store-bought canned tomatoes, but it's also a more sustainable alternative, especially if you can use tomatoes from a local farmers market. Plus, this way you know exactly what's going into your mixture.

Author Angi Schneider writes, "I put those tomatoes in a baking dish with a few spices and pop it in the oven while I finish sorting through the rest of the garden harvest. By the time I'm done sorting, the tomatoes are ready to come out of the oven and get preserved for the freezer."

Frozen Roasted Tomato & Herb Sauce

Makes 3 half-pint jars

Ingredients

1 to 2 tbsp. olive oil
3 lb. paste tomatoes (plum tomatoes)
¼ lb. onions, cut into quarters
7 cloves garlic
1 tsp. fresh thyme
1 tsp. chopped fresh oregano
½ tsp. chopped fresh rosemary
1 tbsp. chopped fresh basil

Method

Preheat the oven to 250°F.
Oil a cast-iron skillet or baking sheet with olive oil and put the tomatoes, onions, and garlic in it. Lightly brush the vegetables with the olive oil.
Sprinkle the thyme, oregano, rosemary, and basil on top of the vegetables.
Put the pan in the oven and bake the mixture for 45 minutes. When the vegetables are soft, remove the pan from the oven and allow the vegetables to cool.
There are several things you can do with the cooled vegetables, depending on how you want to use them. You want to remove the tomato skins; they should easily slip off.
You can put the vegetables and herbs in a bowl and slice through them with two knives. Or you can blend the vegetables and herbs into a chunky or smooth sauce. Or you can leave them as they are.
Put the tomatoes and herbs in freezer-safe containers, label them, and put them in the refrigerator overnight to cool. The next day, transfer the containers to the freezer to store them for up to a year.

Reprinted with permission from The Ultimate Guide to Preserving Vegetables by Angi Schneider, Page Street Publishing Co. 2020.