If you’ve got more tomatoes than you can eat this week, you have plenty of good options: eat them fresh, roast them, freeze them whole, dry them, cook them into sauce or paste, or can them for the long haul. The best choice depends on how many you have, what variety they are, and how quickly you want to use them.
Match the Tomato to the Task
Not all tomatoes are built for the same job. Romas and other plum varieties have thick, meaty walls and few seeds, making them ideal for sauces, paste, and canning. Beefsteaks are best sliced thick for burgers or Caprese salads. Cherry tomatoes are perfect for snacking, tossing into salads, or roasting whole. Heirloom varieties like Cherokee Purple, with their complex, slightly smoky sweetness, shine when eaten fresh. Amish Paste, another heirloom, works beautifully in sauces and salsas.
If you’re staring at a mixed haul from the garden or farmer’s market, a simple rule works: thick-walled, meaty tomatoes go into cooked preparations, and juicy, thin-skinned tomatoes get eaten raw or roasted.
Store Them the Right Way
The ideal holding temperature for a ripe tomato is around 55°F. Most refrigerators sit between 35°F and 38°F, which is cold enough to damage cell membranes and kill flavor-producing enzymes. The result is that mealy, bland texture nobody wants. Room temperature (around 70°F) is warmer than ideal too, but it’s the better choice for tomatoes you’ll eat within a few days.
If your tomatoes are slightly overripe and you’re worried about mold, the fridge is actually fine. Testing from Serious Eats found that overripe tomatoes don’t suffer noticeable flavor loss from refrigeration. For any tomato that’s been in the fridge, let it sit at room temperature for a day or two before eating. Some of the flavor-producing enzyme activity can recover during that time.
Ripening Green Tomatoes
Tomatoes naturally produce ethylene gas, which drives ripening. Place green tomatoes in a brown paper bag, close it loosely, and leave it on the counter. The bag traps the ethylene and speeds the process. Within a few days, green tomatoes will shift to red and soften up.
Roast Them Low and Slow
Slow roasting concentrates flavor and transforms even mediocre tomatoes into something deeply sweet and savory. Preheat your oven to 225°F. Halve or quarter the tomatoes, spread them on a baking sheet, toss with olive oil, salt, pepper, and fresh herbs like thyme or basil, and roast for 2.5 to 3 hours. Stir a few times along the way. They’re done when they’re blistered, shrunken, and intensely fragrant.
Roasted tomatoes are great on pasta, pizza, toast, or stirred into grain bowls. For longer storage, pack them into a clean jar and cover completely with olive oil. They’ll keep in the refrigerator for about four weeks as long as they stay submerged. Remove the garlic and herbs before storing, since those can spoil in oil. You can also freeze roasted tomatoes in oil for four to six months.
One safety note worth knowing: homemade oils infused with garlic or herbs carry a botulism risk at room temperature. Always refrigerate them and discard any unused portion after four days. Submerging cooked tomatoes in oil is a different situation (the acid helps), but keep those refrigerated too.
Freeze Them for Soups and Sauces
Freezing is the fastest preservation method and requires almost no special equipment. Frozen tomatoes lose their firm texture when thawed, so they’re best used in soups, stews, and sauces where that doesn’t matter.
The simplest approach: place whole, unwashed tomatoes on a cookie sheet and freeze them solid, then transfer to freezer bags. That’s it. The skins slip off easily under warm water once they start to thaw. If you prefer to peel first, dip the tomatoes in boiling water for about a minute until the skins split, then cool and peel before freezing on the sheet.
Don’t add seasonings before freezing. Garlic, onion, and herbs can either intensify or fade unpredictably during freezer storage. Season when you cook. For the best quality, keep your freezer at 0°F or below and use the tomatoes within about eight months.
Make Sauce or Paste
A big batch of tomatoes reduces beautifully into sauce or paste that you can freeze in portions and use all winter. For paste, start by simmering cut tomatoes in a large pot for about an hour until they fall apart and most of the liquid cooks off. Push the pulp through a food mill or mesh strainer to remove seeds and skins. You’ll get roughly a cup of strained puree from a large pot of tomatoes.
Spread that puree on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake at 275°F for 30 to 40 minutes, until the edges look dry and slightly caramelized with a few cracks on top. The result is a thick, rich paste with far more concentrated flavor than anything from a tube. Freeze it in ice cube trays or small containers for easy portioning.
Dry Them for Intense Flavor
Dried tomatoes pack a punch in pasta, salads, and sandwiches. You can use a food dehydrator or a regular oven. In a dehydrator, set the temperature to 135°F and plan on 8 to 10 hours total. Check at the four-hour mark and continue until they’re dry and chewy with no moisture when you press them.
In a standard oven, set it to the lowest temperature possible (usually 140°F to 170°F) and prop the door open slightly with a wooden spoon handle to let moisture escape. Expect 5 to 8 hours. Plum tomatoes, halved lengthwise, work best because of their low moisture content. Store dried tomatoes in airtight containers or pack them in olive oil in the fridge.
Can Them for Year-Round Use
Water bath canning lets you store tomatoes at room temperature for a year or more. The critical step is acidification. Tomatoes sit right at the edge of safe acidity for water bath canning, so you need to add acid to every jar. The standard ratio is 2 tablespoons of bottled lemon juice or half a teaspoon of citric acid per quart. For pints, use 1 tablespoon of lemon juice or a quarter teaspoon of citric acid. Use bottled lemon juice specifically, since its acidity is standardized (fresh lemons vary).
You can can tomatoes whole, crushed, or as juice. Follow a tested recipe from a source like the USDA or your state’s extension service. Improvising ratios or skipping the acid is where canning becomes dangerous.
Cooking Boosts Key Nutrients
Here’s a useful fact if you’re deciding between eating tomatoes raw or cooked: heat actually makes some of their most valuable nutrients easier for your body to absorb. Lycopene, the antioxidant that gives tomatoes their red color, is far more bioavailable in cooked and processed forms. Cooking breaks down cell walls and releases lycopene from its crystalline structure, making it easier to absorb during digestion. Tomato paste contains roughly 11 times more lycopene per serving than raw tomatoes. Vitamin E and potassium also concentrate during cooking.
Raw tomatoes do win on vitamin C, folate, and certain carotenoids, which break down with heat. So a mix of fresh and cooked tomatoes across your diet gives you the broadest nutritional benefit. If you’re making sauce or paste anyway, you’re getting a genuine nutritional upgrade, not just a flavor one.