Yes. You can. In fact, you can just freeze your cored and peeled tomatoes. I do all the time. One thing about freezing them is that it tends to break down the cells more than canning, so instead of having firm chunks, it breaks down much more. Perfect for soups, in my opinion.

Just freezing them after coring is fine too. The freezer will help lossen the skins once they are thawed. This makes for easier prepping. When canning tomatoes, be sure to add the necessary acid to each jar, for safety sake.

rosey,

Sure, you can. If you freeze them while still very fresh the quality of the canned product is still very good.

If you are making sauce that you will be putting through a food mill anyway, you can even freeze the tomatoes completely whole --- get some big Ziplock baggies and just add in more tomatoes as you get them till you have a nice batch!

I've done this sometimes because I had not too few tomatoes but too MANY --- sometimes in the fall they are coming in so fast and furious it takes a fair amount of time just to PICK them, and I'm wanting to spend my time making fresh thing and maybe drying some of them, so the canning has to wait till later in the fall --- it's cooler then, too, not so bad to steam up the kitchen!

There's another thread here about how to remove water to get your tomato sauce thicker, and someone clever pointed out that if you freeze the toms first, their cells will break down and a lot of water will come out of them --- you'll find as they defrost that you have mushy fruit sitting in watery liquid, which you can pour off. So if you want a thick tomato sauce it can even be a HELP to freeze them first!

Good luck,

Zabby

And if you never get around to canning them.........just use them right from the freezer.
Deanna

A right from the freezer guy here. Run hot water over the frozen tomato while peeling skin off. Or leave skin on as it will float to the top in soups, stews etc.

Does anyone else freeze the whole tomato first and then spray with water to coat them? Something I've always done, but wonder if is really worth it?

Spraying the water as a coat reduces moisture absorbtion. They do this with things like popsicles and other frozen stuff ona stick. Because tomatoes have lots of water, its probably not necessary. It may also help to reduce clumping or sticking together.

Thanks so much for the tips. I plan on freezing some today. And I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my tomato plants keep producing well! :)