I didn't have many excess tomatoes this year, so I froze them. I've just
used a bag of them and I find that they more or less melt into whatever
I put them into, i.e. they don't cook down into a sauce but dissolve
into a sauce. I presume the cellular structure is destroyed by freezing.

Does anyone know of the vagaries of other preserving methods?
--
FB - FFF

Billy

Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights.
Get up, stand up, Don't give up the fight.
- Bob Marley

In article
,
Billy wrote:

I didn't have many excess tomatoes this year, so I froze them. I've just
used a bag of them and I find that they more or less melt into whatever
I put them into, i.e. they don't cook down into a sauce but dissolve
into a sauce. I presume the cellular structure is destroyed by freezing.

Does anyone know of the vagaries of other preserving methods?

My mom always canned them.

Worked well for us!
--
Peace, Om

Remove - (dash) to validate gmail.

"Human nature seems to be to control other people until they put their foot down." -- Steve Rothstein

Billy wrote in
:

I didn't have many excess tomatoes this year, so I froze them. I've
just used a bag of them and I find that they more or less melt into
whatever I put them into, i.e. they don't cook down into a sauce but
dissolve into a sauce. I presume the cellular structure is destroyed
by freezing.

Does anyone know of the vagaries of other preserving methods?

You *might* do ok if you froze them fast, like with dry ice. Tomatoes
are, depending on variety, around 50%-ish water. (This is a quick
estimate.) If you freeze something slow, you'll get large sharp ice
crystals that perforate cell walls and make them in to mush. If you
freeze it fast, you'll get smaller crystals and they won't do as much
damage. (Most this information from Good Eats' Strawberry show.)

My mother cooks them down on the stove, then puts the tomatoes in jars
and cans them in a hot water bath. Add some browned grown beef, garlic,
basil, and orgegano to a qt jar of sauce and you've got spaghetti sauce.
It's good stuff. :-)

Puckdropper
--
Wise is the man who attempts to answer his question before asking it.

To email me directly, send a message to puckdropper (at) fastmail.fm

On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 20:53:23 -0800, Billy wrote:

I didn't have many excess tomatoes this year, so I froze them. I've just
used a bag of them and I find that they more or less melt into whatever
I put them into, i.e. they don't cook down into a sauce but dissolve
into a sauce. I presume the cellular structure is destroyed by freezing.

Does anyone know of the vagaries of other preserving methods?

I cook them into a sauce base, i.e. just tomatoes, garlic and herbs, and
then freeze them in plastic containers, in a good year I make about 5
gallons of sauce, this year it was less. Then over the course of the year
I unfreeze some of the sauce, add meat, shrimp, mushrooms, more garlic,
and more herbs to turn it into a proper spaghetti sauce which I then
refreeze. Adding the other ingredients doubles the volume which is why I
do that piecemeal rather than all at once. Frozen sauce keeps forever.

Omelet wrote:
In article
,
Billy wrote:

I didn't have many excess tomatoes this year, so I froze them. I've just
used a bag of them and I find that they more or less melt into whatever
I put them into, i.e. they don't cook down into a sauce but dissolve
into a sauce. I presume the cellular structure is destroyed by freezing.

Does anyone know of the vagaries of other preserving methods?

My mom always canned them.

Worked well for us!

Yep, Yep! I either can or freeze....but before I freeze, if's it for
spaghetti sauce, then I cook it down with all the fixings for the sauce,
cool & pour into containers, then stick them in the freezer. The portion
that I want to use for stewed maters, then I just stew them down, then
do the same protocol for freezing.

My grandmother just blanches hers before freezing...I haven't tried that
myself yet though!

Never had any problems with my frozen maters...

How did you fix yours before freezing?
Sorry they didn't turn out well for you!
~Rae

In article ,
rachael simpson wrote:

Omelet wrote:
In article
,
Billy wrote:

I didn't have many excess tomatoes this year, so I froze them. I've just
used a bag of them and I find that they more or less melt into whatever
I put them into, i.e. they don't cook down into a sauce but dissolve
into a sauce. I presume the cellular structure is destroyed by freezing.

Does anyone know of the vagaries of other preserving methods?

My mom always canned them.

Worked well for us!

Yep, Yep! I either can or freeze....but before I freeze, if's it for
spaghetti sauce, then I cook it down with all the fixings for the sauce,
cool & pour into containers, then stick them in the freezer. The portion
that I want to use for stewed maters, then I just stew them down, then
do the same protocol for freezing.

My grandmother just blanches hers before freezing...I haven't tried that
myself yet though!

Never had any problems with my frozen maters...

How did you fix yours before freezing?
Sorry they didn't turn out well for you!
~Rae

Oh, they turned out fine, as far as I'm concerned. It's just with fresh
tomatoes, it seems like it takes so long to cook them down into a sauce.
Probably because the ice ruptured the cell walls, these tomatoes turned
into a liquid as they defrosted, no chunks. It just surprised me.

I had been all geared up to do some canning but my crop was so piddlin'
that I just cut them up and threw them into the freezer. Maybe I'll get
to can next year.

Hope your holding up through the drought your experiencing.
--
Bush Behind Bars

Billy

Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights.
Get up, stand up, Don't give up the fight.
- Bob Marley

In article ,
General Schvantzkopf wrote:

On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 20:53:23 -0800, Billy wrote:

I didn't have many excess tomatoes this year, so I froze them. I've just
used a bag of them and I find that they more or less melt into whatever
I put them into, i.e. they don't cook down into a sauce but dissolve
into a sauce. I presume the cellular structure is destroyed by freezing.

Does anyone know of the vagaries of other preserving methods?

I cook them into a sauce base, i.e. just tomatoes, garlic and herbs, and
then freeze them in plastic containers, in a good year I make about 5
gallons of sauce, this year it was less. Then over the course of the year
I unfreeze some of the sauce, add meat, shrimp, mushrooms, more garlic,
and more herbs to turn it into a proper spaghetti sauce which I then
refreeze. Adding the other ingredients doubles the volume which is why I
do that piecemeal rather than all at once. Frozen sauce keeps forever.

It looks to me that freezing them first helps to produce the sauce
because once defrosted, it's just a matter of reducing the liquid. No
blender is needed to remove the chunks. Freezing whole tomatoes does
take more space. So the reasonable thing, so it seem to me, would be to
freeze the tomatoes and the defrost and make your sauce and then
re-freeze the sauce.

Maybe I'll be lucky and just eat my tomatoes fresh.
--
Bush Behind Bars

Billy

Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights.
Get up, stand up, Don't give up the fight.
- Bob Marley

We have always had great results in freezing tomatoes, when skins crack
after putting in boiling water we skin tomatoes and use plastic containers
for freezing..use as needed and always good for us...stewed tomatoes,
sphagetti sauce, etc

"Billy" wrote in message
...
I didn't have many excess tomatoes this year, so I froze them. I've just
used a bag of them and I find that they more or less melt into whatever
I put them into, i.e. they don't cook down into a sauce but dissolve
into a sauce. I presume the cellular structure is destroyed by freezing.

Does anyone know of the vagaries of other preserving methods?
--
FB - FFF

Billy

Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights.
Get up, stand up, Don't give up the fight.
- Bob Marley

On Nov 18, 6:18 pm, "japus" wrote:
We have always had great results in freezing tomatoes, when skins crack
after putting in boiling water we skin tomatoes and use plastic containers
for freezing..use as needed and always good for us...stewed tomatoes,
sphagetti sauce, etc

"Billy" wrote in message

...

I didn't have many excess tomatoes this year, so I froze them. I've just
used a bag of them and I find that they more or less melt into whatever
I put them into, i.e. they don't cook down into a sauce but dissolve
into a sauce. I presume the cellular structure is destroyed by freezing.

Does anyone know of the vagaries of other preserving methods?
--
FB - FFF

Billy

Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights.
Get up, stand up, Don't give up the fight.
- Bob Marley

Guess everyone's recipes differ ... I don't bottle, freeze, puree,
tomatoes, we just eat them or cook them up in a sauce. With my
Peppadews, however, I just toss them straight into the freezer. Works
perfectly. Frozen seed does not germinate and is less pungent than
fresh seed.