Marinated Cherry Tomatoes Recipe - Peas and Crayons (2024)

FAQs

How do you preserve an abundance of cherry tomatoes? ›

Freeze 'Em 🌬️: Wash and dry the tomatoes, then freeze them on a tray before transferring to a bag. Perfect for later use in salads or cooking! Oil Bath 🛁: Submerge tomatoes in olive oil with herbs. Keeps them flavorful and ready to enhance your dishes.

Storing and Handling Guidelines

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.

But, can you freeze cherry tomatoes? As it turns out, the bite-sized fruits couldn't be easier to pop in the freezer, so you can enjoy the taste of summer all year long. Just remember that freezing changes tomatoes' texture, so it's best to eat frozen tomatoes cooked into a sauce or soup, rather than fresh.

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.

Our Test Kitchen says 60 to 65° is an ideal temperature for storing and recommends placing your tomatoes out of direct sunlight. The Test Kitchen also suggests putting smaller cherry and grape tomatoes in a shallow dish so air can flow around them.

To store the tomatoes in the refrigerator or freezer, place them in a zip-top bag and squeeze any extra air out. Put them in the refrigerator for up to a month or stick them in the freezer. To store tomatoes in oil, sterilize a mason jar by boiling it for 10 minutes.

Small tomato varieties like cherry and grape should be firm but not too hard. It will be more obvious in large tomatoes when there's a bruise, so make sure they feel heavy but not soft.

Grape tomatoes aren't as sweet as cherry tomatoes, and their flesh is meatier and less watery. Since grape tomatoes last longer than cherry tomatoes, they're becoming more and more popular since they are hardier and less fragile to pack and transport.

"You're essentially zapping flavor and texture from a tomato when you refrigerate it," says Gregory Lofts, the former deputy food editor at Martha Stewart Living. Lofts also points out that tomatoes very quickly take on odors from other foods in the refrigerator, which can further degrade their quality and taste.

Why shouldn't you refrigerate cherry tomatoes? ›

NEW YORK If you buy tomatoes from John Banscher at his farmstand in New Jersey, he'll recommend keeping them out of the fridge or they'll lose some of their taste. Now scientists have figured out why: It's because some of their genes chill out and are altered by cold temperatures, ultimately affecting the flavor.

As long as they aren't turning mushy, a sign of rot and if they aren't moldy, they are perfectly okay. Wrinkling usually just indicates that they are beginning to dehydrate. As the juices inside the tomato decrease in volume, the exterior becomes wrinkled.

Tomatoes, specifically cherry or grape varieties, can start to wrinkle and get soft when they're on the verge on going bad. They're perfectly edible but have lost some flavor and firmness, so they taste subpar.

Once fully ripe, place tomatoes in a bag and store them in the refrigerator to prolong shelf life. For the best flavor, bring tomatoes back to room temperature before serving. The same rules apply to cherry tomatoes. Keep them on the counter in a bowl if possible.

The process is amazingly simple. Washed cherry, grape, and salad sized tomatoes are allowed to air dry before freezing them in a single layer on a baking tray overnight. I like to line the tray with a piece of freezer paper to ensure that they don't stick to the tray.

Place the tomatoes on a cookie sheet in the freezer until completely frozen—typically a few hours. Then store the flash-frozen tomatoes in freezer bags or air-tight freezer containers.

Freezing tomatoes is the easiest way to keep ripe tomatoes until you're ready to use them. You don't have to peel them first—in fact, the act of freezing them itself makes the tomatoes insanely easy to peel! —and you can freeze as many or as few at a time as you like.