Some years ago when my garden didn’t produce enough tomatoes at a time for a full canner to process, I started freezing them — I’ve never gone back to canning tomatoes!

Simply wash and stem the tomatoes, dry and put in freezer bags whole. If you only put one layer in a bag, they stack neatly in the freezer. When I need tomatoes for sauce or soup, I take out what I need and run under hot water. The skins slip off neatly — non of the “meat” of the tomato is lost. I then cut the frozen tomato in half (a few minutes of thawing helps) chunk up and toss in my recipe. The tomato breaks up into a smooth sauce without having to use my food processor.

Be sure to date the bags of frozen tomatoes with the year frozen. In the years of garden bounty I have more than I can use the next winter, but have used tomatoes from as much as three years prior to no detriment to my recipe, which certainly helps in the “years of the green tomato.” If there’s any freezer burn, just trim it off.