Using frozen tomatoes

When I first left the corporate world in favor of full time Teagan-hood, I made a deal with myself that I would work through the freezers before buying anything new. You know how scary it is to no longer have that sweet income that allows you to waste with reckless abandon... I would have vowed to eat my pets before buying meat if I didn't love them so much. Plus that would be sick.

So, the update. It's been a little over 2 months and the garage freezer is nearly empty. It will be nice to unplug that power sucker for a month or so until the new veggies come in. I just pulled out the last three gallon ziploc bags of last season's tomatoes for tonight's dinner. What can you do with a frozen tomato you ask? Well, sauce of course. It's way easier than peeling, seeding, etc. right at harvest time when you're buried under a hundred pounds of ripe little time bombs.

Here's what we do. First pick the healthy tomatoes from the garden and wash them really well. Toss or use right away any that appear too 'ripe' to make it. Once washed and basically dried, they all get piled into gallon freezer bags and stored in the deep freeze until they're needed months later. That's it.

When you thaw them the clear water just drains out. That saves hours of simmering! The peels slide right off too. No boiling water bath to ice bath. Just toss the little buggers into a food mill to strip any leftover peels and seeds and you're left with lovely red tomato goodness. Skins and seeds go right to the dogs in this house.

To make sauce from the puree, I turn to Chef Anne Burrell for inspiration: Bolognese Type Sauce. The secret is to brown everything really well. As Chef Ann says, "brown food tastes good!". If I have some leftover ground turkey, beef or something I'll use it. If not, I'll go vegetarian. Here's a link to the original recipe.

Bolonese Inspired Sauce from fresh tomatoes-Meatless
1) In a food processor grind up a few carrots, a couple stalks of celery and some onion. If you have garlic and like the flavor of it, go ahead and add it. Use as much or as little as you like, but don't skimp on any of the veg. You can add other things like green pepper to the grind too. Go wild. Add a little Olive Oil to help the paste along. When finely ground, put the mush paste in a large hot pan with a little more Olive Oil and some salt. If you like a little zing, add some spicy oil.
2) Brown the dickens out of this stuff. Let it sit to carmelize. Don't fiddle too much with it or it'll never turn brown. Taste to make sure there's no rawness in there. This step should take at least 15 minutes or so. Don't rush it.
2a) If you're in a meaty mood, add your ground beef, turkey or whatever you have after the veg is brown. Again cook it well. (BROWN).
3) DEGLAZE: Once it's a nice color (read you can't tell carrots are in there...) deglaze your pan with a little wine. I use whatever is open. Red, white, whatever. I don't discriminate. You'll need a cup or 3 depending on how much mush you have. Reduce it all by about half. Taste for seasoning. You can add more salt, herbs, pepper. Whatever floats your boat. They key is to make sure you cannot taste rawness in there.
4) Tomato magic: COOK OUT THE TOMATOES. Without this step you'll have a raw tasting tomato sauce... Ick. Scoop in one soup ladel of the tomato puree from the food mill bowl into the pan and let it sizzle down to being nearly brown and mostly dry. It'll sizzle like crazy if your pan is hot enough. Repeat for at least half of your raw tomato puree. The flavor is exceptionally full when you reduce like this. Taste. Season accordingly. In chef Anne's version she adds water and simmers it out to develop flavor. Remember her recipe starts with tomato paste. This one is fresh. If you feel like you must follow a recipe, then by all means go for it. I generally prefer to move right to step 5.
5) Eat! Sometimes I'll just put cooked chick peas and/or beans into the sauce and eat as-is. Sometimes I add pasta. It depends on how the spirit moves me that day. This freezes pretty well, but I don't have much evidence of that since ours usually is completely GONE in a day or so. If it's spicy, a dollop of sour cream or plain yogurt makes it smooth ans silky.

Happy eating.