Freezing Tomatoes

This year's tomato crop has been quite plentiful.  I ate what I wanted fresh, made four different batches of salsa, dried boxes of them and gave away more boxes of them and still they come.  Soon though there will no longer be garden fresh tomatoes so I am doing what I can to preserve my harvests as the season comes to a close.  In this case I am freezing them now to make sauce with them later when I have more time available.

The process is quite simple.  Each tomato gets washed and cored.  One by one they are cut into chunks and tossed into a gallon freezer bag.  I don't bother skinning them because the skins will fall off as they thaw when I am ready to use them.  Once a bag is full, I squeeze out all the air and then throw it into the freezer.  So far I have packed six gallons with tomato chunks, and may have to find room for a few more gallons before it is all said and done for the year.

When I am ready I will throw the frozen tomatoes into my big stock pot and cook them down.  After they soften a bit they are run through my food mill to remove the seeds and skins.  The skins and seeds will be bonus treats for the chickens (they really love that kind of stuff!).  The remaining pulp will continue to cook down until the sauce reaches the thickness that I prefer.  Last year I cooked down several gallons of tomatoes and only wound up with enough sauce for one batch of nine pints in the canner.  This year I am hoping to have more to show for my hard work because I specifically grew sauce tomatoes.  They have more flesh and less seeds than other tomatoes which will hopefully result in more sauce with less effort on my part.