16 End-of-Summer Tomato Recipes (2024)

FAQs

What to do with the end of season tomatoes? ›

Harvest seeds from midsummer to fall. Choose the healthiest-looking heirloom (not hybrid) tomatoes to cull seeds. Scoop out the seeds and ferment. Separate, clean, dry, and finally store the seeds for next year.

Tomatoes may be frozen raw or cooked, whole, sliced, chopped, or puréed. Tomatoes do not need to be blanched before freezing. Frozen tomatoes are best used in cooked foods such as soups, sauces and stews as they become mushy when they're thawed.

One of the best ways to store whole tomatoes long-term is in the freezer. Freezing fresh tomatoes from the farmers market or grocery store increases the shelf life by twelve to eighteen months.

Ripe Tomatoes

And unless you're eating them immediately, ripe, locally grown tomatoes will also last longer in the fridge; eat within a few days. Store ripe tomatoes in your fridge stress-free and enjoy them within a couple days of purchasing.

You can freeze all different types of tomatoes, from petite cherry tomatoes to meaty beefsteaks and pretty heirlooms. But before you freeze them, make sure the tomatoes are fully ripe so that they taste their very best. There are several ways to freeze tomatoes, but the easiest is freezing them whole.

Cut the tomatoes as desired and place them on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Place the baking sheet in the freezer and freeze for 30 minutes or until solid. Transfer the frozen tomatoes to a plastic freezer bag and label the bag with the date. Freeze for up to one year.

It's so simple to freeze whole cherry tomatoes that it hardly warrants instructions; just wash, dry, and freeze! Wash and dry cherry tomatoes. Lay the tomatoes out in a single layer on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet, and freeze for about two hours, or until frozen solid.

Can you freeze raw cherry tomatoes? ›

Tomatoes are one of the few items from your backyard vegetable patch that you can freeze without blanching. Just wash and dry the tomatoes, place them on a cookie sheet, and slide them into the freezer.

Store ripe cherry or grape tomatoes ideally at 45 to 60 °F with a relative humidity of 95%. Under these conditions, tomatoes will be acceptable for up to 10 days. Tomatoes stored at refrigeration temperatures below 41 °F will have approximate shelf life of 5 days.

Once the tomato reaches a stage when it's about ½ green and ½ pink (called the 'breaker stage'), the tomato can be harvested and ripened off the vine with no loss of flavor, quality or nutrition.

Good vegetables to rotate in after tomatoes include beans and peas because they naturally fortify soils with nitrogen, and greens, because they are not too demanding.

This helps them gradually transition into dormancy. Prune the tomato plants, removing any new growth and leaving just the main stems and fruit clusters. This reduces the energy the plant needs to sustain itself during the winter.

Harvest All Green Tomatoes at the End of the Season

If you live in a region with cold weather extremes, Cunningham suggests harvesting all of the tomato fruits on the plants before the end of fall so they can after-ripen safely indoors.