Our Best Tips for How to Preserve Tomatoes


If you’ve got piles and piles (and piles) of tomatoes, we bet you’d love some suggestions for what to do with them. Roasted, made into sauce or paste or jelly or confit, it’s all here. These recipes are all so good, you might wish that you had even more tomatoes.

Assorted tomatoes of varying sizes and colors.

: letterberry

As with most of life’s greatest loves, tomatoes can be maddeningly frustrating. Most of the year we’re forced to impatiently make do with disappointingly lackluster imposters. By the time summer finally brings its indecent glut of the most perfect specimens imaginable, we simply lose our minds at the farmers market and haul away more tomatoes than we can possibly put to good use. 

Or not. With some time-honored tips and techniques devised by those who are similarly infatuated, it’s possible to preserve tomatoes at the height of their obscene abundance in a manner that will get you through all the other months of tomato despair. Here’s how to do exactly that.—LC Editors

How to have fresh tomato sauce all year long

Three resealable plastic bags filled with freezer tomato sauce.

: Deirdre Rooney

It’s easy, in cooler months, to get lost in nostalgia about fresh sauce made with superlative tomatoes. What if it was as easy to satisfy that craving simply by reaching into the freezer?

How to make homemade tomato paste

A rimmed baking sheet spread with a thick layer of homemade tomato paste.

: Sara Remington

Yeah, you read that correctly. Channel your inner nonna and make the most intensely tomato-y paste you’ve ever experienced. It’s crazy easy and you’ll never again wonder what to do with the leftover dregs at the bottom of the can.

How to roast and preserve tomatoes in oil

A rimmed baking sheet filled with assorted oven-roasted tomatoes.

: Jessica Theroux

A traditional Italian approach to tomatoes is to slow roast them in a low oven, coaxing the water to dissipate and leaving behind nothing but the essence of tomato fabulousness intensified. A classic for a reason.

How to pickle green tomatoes

Three jars filled with pickled green tomatoes and a cinnamon stick with two empty jars in the background.

: Alan Benson

We know we’re not the only ones who catch their breath at the tartness of a pale green tomato. We see it as no less lovely than its ripe counterpart. Just different. Pickling the orbs caters to their innate puckeriness in the most flattering fashion.

How to confit cherry tomatoes

A Dutch oven filled with a cherry tomato confit of Sun Gold cherry tomatoes, oil, and fresh basil leaves.

: Michael Graydon | Nikole Herriott

A slow bath in olive oil improves most things. Including tomatoes. It’s essentially like pickling but without the tartness. Just richness.

How to turn tomatoes into jelly

A slice of toast schmeared with Portuguese tomato jam on a decorative plate with a spoon resting beside it.

: Rebecca Caro

A must for the Portuguese to accompany bread and cheese, this slightly sweet classic may not be your initial thought when it comes to what to do with tomatoes. Just wait until you taste it.

© 2021 LC Editors. All rights reserved. All materials used with permission.