Freezing cherry tomatoes

Plashing

Is it possible to freeze cherry tomatoes without cooking them first pl.ease.I wounder if anyone had done them and had good results.

pr1mr0se

If you try to freeze them whole, they will simply collapse when defrosted.  I have successfully frozen them chopped in the food processor first.  When defrosted, I have then made chutney with them or cooked and sieved to make a quick passata.  
btw a lot of chutney recipes call for the tomatoes to be skinned first.  If they are chopped and frozen, it makes no difference to the final result (and I won the village cup for best chutney a few years ago!  Not that I'm boasting or anything like that!   )

Plashing

Thanks for the reply,I will see what my wife says,we did make some chutney in 2011 and we are still eating,we sometimes put in soup to add flavour,we might try it in stir fries see what the tastes like.

Dovefromabove

Half them, sprinkle with a little olive oil and roast slowly in the oven until their soft and beginning to caramelise. Freeze in containers (I do about a mug-full in each bag) and use them as a bade for soups and sauces etc .... I sometimes liquidise them depending on what I’m using them for. 

Emerion

Dovefromabove said:

Half them, sprinkle with a little olive oil and roast slowly in the oven until their soft and beginning to caramelise. Freeze in containers (I do about a mug-full in each bag) and use them as a bade for soups and sauces etc .... I sometimes liquidise them depending on what I’m using them for. 

I agree, roasting intensifies the flavour, and reduces the bulk of your toms. Try them just roasted in place of fresh toms in Greek salad. Or I blitz them with a hand blender. If you roast them for an extra long time you get a stiff paste, once blitzed, which takes up no room in the freezer, and is a flavour sensation in the winter.

Suesyn

We freeze all our surplus tomatoes, roughly chopped and in those containers that takeaways come in. So far we have more than 20  in the freezer from this year's crop and will have at least that again. We used to buy quite a few tinned tomatoes before we had the allotment but now grow sufficient to last until about April. We use them in soups,  casseroles and to make passata. We have some plum tomatoes specifically for cooking but also grow cherry tomatoes and others. There's so many at the moment we couldn't possibly eat them all, although we even eat them at  breakfast! 

neilbradburn

Hi,
I've been drying my surplus cherry tomatoes on a tray in the oven on about 90 degrees, with the door wedged slightly open, for a few hours. They then store for weeks in the fridge. I submerge them in olive oil, and thus have sun-dried tomatoes of sorts, which have a lovely intense flavour :-)
kind regards
Neil

B3

Open freeze them and put them on a bag. When you want to use them, take out a handful and run them under the tap. The skins will slide off.
While the tomatoes are still slightly frozen, you can chop them up without getting juice everywhere.

Fairygirl

I never have any left for freezing - I'm a greedy little fairy....

B3

If i have any supermarket tomatoes that aren't going ti be used, I just chuck them loose into the freezer.
Speaking of freezers, have you ever tried frozen leftover tinned pineapple - sans tin!. Yum. Makes good ice cubes too.

Fairygirl

B3 said:

While the tomatoes are still slightly frozen, you can chop them up without getting juice everywhere.

I do that with chicken sometimes. If you have it defrosted to just the right stage [a skill in itself  ] it's a really 'clean' way of doing it, and then it defrosts easily the rest of the way for stir frying etc