Laziness means many of us put all vegetables in the fridge, but that isn’t always the best idea. Tomatoes have much more flavour if you don’t refrigerate them – which is why you’re supposed to keep them in your pantry instead. However, if you want the extra shelf life that chilling affords, there’s a trick to retaining maximum flavour.
In an old issues of Australian Good Food, gardening writer Meredith Kirton outlines why “airing” your tomatoes prior to refrigeration is a good strategy:
Keep tomatoes in a pantry or cool, dark place rather than the refrigerator, if possible. Although they won’t last as long as if they were refrigerated, their flavour will be much better. If you do refrigerate them, take them out of the fridge the day before you plan to use them to let them “smell the air” again for a few hours before use, as they will regain some flavour this way.
If you can’t grow your own and your pantry is crowded, this is definitely a good compromise. (At the other hand of the scale, freezing tomatoes makes life easier if you want to peel them for sauces.)
This story has been updated since its original publication.
Comments
3 responses to “How To Retain Flavour In Refrigerated Tomatoes”
Which is it? “take them out of the fridge the day before you plan to use them to let them “smell the air” again for a few hours before use”? A day or a few hours?
a day IS only a few hours
I love tomatoes and can’t always buy them ready-to-eat.
But the only tomatoes that go in my fridge are ones that have been cut in half. And after that they are really only good for cooking.
Sometimes I’ll buy sub-par tomatoes because I just can’t hold out, but going without tomatoes when they aren’t really good enough makes them all the more delicious when they are! Like buying cherries in winter – It’s not the same!