TOMATOES:
First, before I go on, and you read and go 'say what?!', I thought I should preface this with the fact that I have successfully been doing this for around 35 years, and I have never, ever, gone back to the methods my cookbooks all said to do. That being said...
When I have a lot of cherry tomatoes, and my family has had their fill for the summer, I set about to freezing some of them. I know that they always say tomatoes need blanched and all that, but really, cherry tomatoes don't. I rinse them off, taking the leaf part off, (but not cutting or dicing, nor taking out the part where the stem attaches.) Then I put them on a cookie sheet with sides on it, and place them in my freezer for a few hours to flash freeze them in a single layer. Once they are frozen solid, I transfer them to quart zip-lock freezer bags and keep them in my fridge freezer.
In the winter time, if I'm making a stew, or a soup, or something, I can just reach into the bag and grab a handful to thaw and add. I don't bother to cut out where the stem was, and nobody has ever noticed. (Case in point...did you ever snatch a cherry tomato right off the vine and pop it in your mouth? Did you have a knife to core it, or did you just eat it? Aha!) The frozen cherries are a nice addition to the winter meals, and doing it by my method, makes them easier to process for freezing. The skins do not get hard while they're frozen. A few times I even sneaked a few thawed ones into other dishes, and nobody noticed that either!
For the larger tomatoes, like beefsteak and such (or even Romas), I do it a little differently. I wash the tomatoes, core them, quarter them, and then run them through the blender or food processor. Notice, I didn't blanch them, nor did I peel them. When I throw them in the processor, all that breaks down to edible size. If I don't want the peel part in, then I drain off the juiced tomato and throw out the leftover skin part. Personally, I like to keep the pureed skin part in, it doesn't affect the taste in spaghetti sauces and things like that, plus I've always heard that most of the nutrients are closest to the skin!
After I have them all pureed, I put them in a large stockpot and cook them down for a while. I let it simmer about half an hour or so. Once that has cooled down to room temp, I start preparing it for the freezer. I do not cook it all the way down, it seems like a huge waste of energy, plus this way works well for me!
I put this cooked tomato juice into, tada...you guessed it, quart or pint zip-lock freezer bags. I know you're going 'is she nuts?!' (Well, yes...but that's a whole nuther thing lol.) I place the zip-lock in a short jar and fold over the edge over and around the top (so the bag doesn't fall in when I'm filling it.) I then fill each bag leaving about an inch, or so, head space. I remove the bag, get as much air out as I can, and zip it shut. I layer the bags, standing up, in a bread pan, and then freeze them.
I know you're probably thinking, but it's not cooked down to make it thick. Well, yes and no. When I take a bag out to thaw it for cooking, or to make my own V-8 drink (or whatever), I stand it up and let it thaw out. Once it's thawed you notice that the thick part is at the bottom, and the top part is more watery looking. I pour off the watery part into a cup, and add the rest of the contents into what I'm cooking. If I'm making a juice drink, then I blend the whole thing back together and add my spices, etc. If I'm just using the thicker bottom parts, then the saved juice part gets used for if I need to add some more while somethings cooking. If it's still not thick enough, then I add a Tablespoon or so of purchased tomato paste.
Whoa...purchased tomato paste? Yes, to my way of thinking, it costs me more for the hours it takes to cook down my tomatoes to the paste stage. Plus when it's on sale, the paste is actually fairly cheap. When I get the paste and I only need a little bit to thicken something, I take the rest and give a ice cube tray a quick shot of Pam (or something similar), stick the paste in there and flash freeze that (of course, I transfer the frozen cubes to what else...zip-locks :-)
PEPPERS
I won't go into freezing whole peppers, but I like to keep bags of diced peppers on hand for those omelets and other things I want diced peppers for. Do I blanch those? No. Do I peel them? No. I wash them, core them, dice them, flash freeze them on a cookie sheet, and store them in quart zip-locks. Not one guest or family member has ever been able to tell they weren't blanched and all that other prep. They taste just as good as fresh, or frozen, store-bought.
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