It seemed like a good idea. Why not? Who wants to stand at the stove when it's muggy and hot, cooking tomatoes down into sauce? Why not freeze the whole tomatoes--easy peasy--dump them in freezer bags--and make sauce in the winter when I want it? Hm, hm? Why not? I looked online and could find nothing that said neither yay nor nay. Though maybe that should have given me a hint.
Hard to believe, but since September when I froze 20 bags of Italian plum tomatoes, I haven't once made tomato sauce. Today I took a bag from the freezer. Nine lovely Italian tomatoes bought at the Jean-Talon market, delivered to my door in the Pointe by a good friend who works near the market.
I let them thaw. Tried to chop one and splatted water all over the counter. Tried another. The same. Devised a new strategy whereby I snipped off the tip and squeezed all the water into the sink before chopping the tomato flesh that remained.
So this is what freezing whole tomatoes does: the skin gets tough and is hard to cut. The insides of the tomato---the flesh and water--separate. The tomato turns into a water balloon. The flesh that remains still tastes like tomato but doesn't make a very convincing sauce.
Next year, next summer, I'll be making sauce--which, even in a hot muggy kitchen, I prefer to do because I know where it comes from.
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