Preparing Fresh Tomatoes for Cooking

As you may have gathered from my “scratchiest-scratch” tag, I like digging into a food project. Can I make ____? Can I make it from the most basic pieces? Not everyone has the time or desire to do that, hey- I don’t ALWAYS do that. This post might not appeal to anyone, but just in case there is someone else out there with a slowpoke garden.

This year my extremely late blooming tomato plants supplied me with an overwhelming crop in mid-October. Vast amounts of perishable food stress me out. I hate to waste and these tomatoes are just too beautiful to go unused. For a while I brought a tomato to every gathering and pawned it off on friends and family, but that was slow going. The fastest way to lighten the load, I figured, was using them in place of canned tomato.

It’s actually quite easy to prep whole fresh tomatoes to be used in place of canned. It takes a fair amount of tomatoes, and I personally can’t tell the difference in the final product so I wouldn’t do this unless you have a surplus or just want to play along.

I weighed out 30oz of tomatoes to replace a 28oz can. First we have to remove the skins. Blanching is a great way to remove the skins from tomatoes (among other things). 30 seconds in boiling water will loosen the skin of a clove of garlic, an almond and a tomato! 

I make a shallow cut somewhere on the tomato before blanching. This helps the skin release.

Prepare an ice water bath next to your boiling water. You want to pop the tomatoes in the bath to cool down after they blanch. Submerge a tomato or two for 30 seconds to 1 minute in boiling water, remove to ice bath. Repeat until all are blanched. (same process for garlic!)

You can see where the skin split.

It’s a tad messy, but so easy to peel the skins off after that!

Now, here comes the really messy part. Wear an apron, and go slowly. Depending on the size of the tomato, make a cut in it, or cut it in half. Gently squeeze out the seeds and juice.

Set aside the juice (we need this, don't throw it out).

 Chop the (mostly) de-seeded pieces to desired size. I went with 1" chunks this time.

Strain the juice, removing the seeds. You may need to help them along by scraping the bottom of the strainer. You can see they are kind of "jammed up" here. Once strained, add the juice back to the tomatoes and there you go!

You’ll want to weigh the tomatoes and juice to see how much you ended up with. I find you don’t lose too much between skins and seeds. But if you need a very specific amount you might want to overestimate at the beginning. Or have a few tomatoes standing by to bulk it up. Then on to your tomato sauce, tomato soup, etc!