Brimming with Tomatoes? Put them up!
If you've got as many tomatoes in your garden as we do in our fields, well, the only advice I have for you is to "PUT THEM UP!" There are so many ways to put up tomatoes, and you can choose whether to put the work in now or later! Here are just a couple methods:
Freeze them whole: This is by far the easiest route and the one I use when I am burnt out and can't do anything else. Just literally put tomatoes into a bag and put the bag in the freezer. Pros: it's easy. Cons: it takes up more room than necessary in the freezer. We actually put up tomatoes this way when we are saving them up for making our Bellair salsa and pizza sauce that we make, and we sell them as well! There are 2 ways to deal with your tomatoes after freezing them with the skin on.
For preparations including the skin: The skin will be in one big chunk that’s a bit tough. You can still include the skin in your finished sauce, just plan to blend the thawed tomatoes with a pretty powerful blender. First, thaw your tomatoes completely. You can use the sit-and wait method, which will take several days. I put the whole bag in a clean cooler for this and rotate it to expose the center to the ambient air temp. The cool thing about this way is that when you thaw them, they will be shriveled tomatoes in water. You can pour off some of that water if you want and then you can cook the tomatoes down much quicker. For a quicker thawing, warm the tomatoes in a big pot on the stovetop and then stick-blend or transfer to a blender and then back into the pot. This method is good for rustic-yet-smooth tomato sauces of all types and ketchup.
For preparations without the skin: The best way to skin frozen, skin-on tomatoes is the same way you’d do it with room-temperature tomatoes. Put the tomatoes into a small bowl in batches and, also in batches, heat water in a kettle and pour over the tomatoes. When the temperature has equalized enough not to burn you, peel the skins off. Then you can put the skinned tomatoes in a pot and cook down, using a potato masher or wooden spoon to break up the form of the tomatoes. I never core tomatoes from frozen! This method is great for a plupy chunky sauce or for tomato jam.
Freshly peeled and still mostly-frozen tomatoes next to the cooled off boiling water bowl.
Sauce em, then freeze or can them: This method takes some time but the payoff is that you have a ready-to-go ingredient when you go to use it in the winter. For frozen sauce, you can wing it! Just use ample head-space (up to 2 inches!) if using a jar. For canning, make sure to use a reputable canning-specific resource and properly acidify your sauce, which is necessary, especially if you add low-acid ingredients like onions to the mix. You can’t can just any old sauce! I like to make my sauce somewhat thin (read: i'm too impatient to cook it down) and then in winter, I can always reduce it or I can use some stock and transform it into a tomato soup!
Can or freeze skinned whole or quartered tomatoes: this is an in-between method, with a little work now, a little work later. The processing is way faster than cooking down sauce but not as fast as throwing them in the freezer whole. Core them if you choose, then skin them the same way you would the frozen ones (by blanching them with boiling water — either poured over them or you can dunk the tomatoes. Then quarter them if you choose. Again, if canning, use a reputable resource.
Other ways to use a ton of tomatoes:
Tomato Jam: excellent on toast, pizza, cheese boards and more. You can can this or freeze it (leave 1 inch headspace if freezing!!)
Tomato Ketchup: a staple in our household. If you don't can, this will keep in the fridge for a few months as is has so much sugar and vinegar.
