When I remember to pull them out of the freezer far enough in advance to actually thaw all the way before trying to cook them down I’m able to drain off a TON of clear liquid! That ought to help with the cook down time quite a bit!
BTW, this now makes 8.5 gallon ziplocks cooked down. There’s at least that many still in the freezer, and a ton of tomatoes still on the plants in various stages of ripeness!
Good for you. I always cook them down and freeze them, or freeze them whole. We haven’t seen a ripe one yet this year.
These are frozen whole, then thawed. I was surprised at the amount of liquid I could drain off, but its making a clear difference in cooking time already!
What a great finding! I have never made sauce from frozen tomatoes, I always use canned from the grocery store. Bet the flavor is much better with fresh frozen. Do you remove the skins first? Is there any reason to freeze them whole? Wouldn’t they defrost faster if they were smaller pieces? I’m excited to try this!
Well, keep in mind these are mostly plum and cherry sized tomatoes, so they’re pretty small. If we were talking say, beefsteaks, I’d be cutting them in halves or quarters before freezing!
I don’t remove the skins, or the seeds. Fresh from the garden I toss them in the blender first, then simmer down, using the stick blender if there’s any chunks left.
Thawed from the freezer I drained the liquid, tossed them into the pot, and used the stick blender to break them up. Then simmered down and used the stick blender one more time to break down any remaining clumps and the skins.
The tomatoes are, of course, washed before freezing or processing!
This does make for a chunkier sauce than one thats had the seeds removed, but honestly the skins get so broken down that I don’t see the point. Maybe if I wasn’t doing the final step with the stick blender.
Certainly fresh from the garden tastes better than canned IMO. One jar from the first batch of this year’s frozen tomatoes is half gone already, so I’m saying it tastes just as good!
Great! I don’t like to remove skins from anything, okay, bananas, and removing skins from tomatoes is a huge process! I am so going to do this…as soon as my big old heirloom tomatoes start ripening! Thanks!
Have fun!
I love chunky sauce, so rarely removed any skins. Like you, just blended it for a bit before cooking.
Wendy – check the tomato sauce you get from the store, a lot of them have taken to adding sugar to it. I detest that! Okay, you may not, but I prefer mine just to have tomatoes in it (I usually go salt free to, but don’t mind that since I would add a bit anyway).
Yup, I don’t add any sugar either, though the fact that I’m using low acid, very sweet, tomatoes helps with that!