Do you refrigerate your tomatoes?

I do keep mine in my refrigerator in the fruit/vegetable bin.

If you’re not gonna use ‘em soon, fridge ‘em. But c’mon, use ‘em while they’re relatively fresh, right?

I cannot cook but my Mother is a gourmet cook. (go figure)

Anyway, my Mom has always drilled it in my head to never refrigerate tomatoes because it makes than acidic.

You cannot cook YET. Call Mom for lessons. She’d love it.

As a rule, I don’t. They lose their flavor if kept in the fridge. This time of year, we can’t get good tomatoes, though. The locally grown ones are available only a few months out of the year, and those are the best. Supermarket tomatoes are picked green and trucked from far away – usually from Mexico this time of year. They’re ripened with ethylene gas on the way to market, which makes them red enough, but they don’t have the flavor you get from tomatoes ripened on the vine. Once in a while, I see hothouse tomatoes, but they’re expensive.

The primary reason for all the cautions against refrigerating them is because when they drop to that temp, it automatically turns off a ripening agent. It’s irreversible, so taking them out afterward does no good.

So, if you’re talking about garden grown or vine ripened tomatoes that’s the operative principle at work.

But nowadays with the hothouse grown, artificially ripened by gas, red plastic baseballs laughingly termed as tomatoes, I doubt it makes much difference.

However, when I buy Grape tomatoes, I don’t refrigerate them and the do seem to ripen a bit after purchase.

I’ve always refrigerated tomatoes, because, well, that’s what my parents have always done, so I assumed that’s the right thing to do. I guess I’ve been missing out.

If I had the space to leave them out, I probably would, now that I know about the ripening thing (thanks guys!). Too bad my kitchen is so small.

Never refrigerate tomatoes. It kills the flavor, for one thing. Bad idea.

I keep them in the fridge once they are ripe. One extra comment, tomatoes out of season generally suck, especially where I live now, so I don’t even buy them much this time of year.

I prefer to keep them in my belly.

I only buy tomatoes in cans or in a bottle labeled “Ketchup”. The cans get stored in a cupboard and the ketchup in the fridge.

@stratman37 Actually I have no interest in learning. Our styles of creating are vastly different so we have a deal: She stays out of my studio and I stay out of her kitchen.

Cold temperatures alter the sugars in tomatoes and destroy some of the flavor. They should not be refrigerated. But most store bought tomatoes taste awful anyway, so it hardly matters. If you have spent good money on local farm fresh tomatoes, or spent hard labor growing your own, then don’t even think about refrigerating them.

Thanks for responding, everyone. My Dad took all of my tomatoes out of the fridge last night, and put them on my window sill. Tomatoes will go in the fridge no more.

Of course we haven’t told you how to store your tomatoes. Put them in a paper bag or cardboard box to protect them from the light and leave them on the counter. Check them daily and if any are very ripe, use them immediately. Storing ripe tomatoes will accelerate the ripening of other tomatoes with them. If they are very unripe and you want to use them soon, store them with a ripe apple.

Don’t put them on the window sill, you want to keep them out of the light.

@jmah

Unfortunately for you, the ripening enzyme has already been shut off so they won’t be getting any riper.

Better luck next year :)

I can’t post links on the iPhone but for those desiring more tomatoey good info in a format combining solid science with theatrical quirkiness, head on over to YouTube.

Just go to the search and input the following:

Alton Brown, tomatoes
Click on the first one in the list.

You’ll be glad you did. I have learned more from his Good Eats program than most other shows on Food Network combined.

Enjoy !

@Dog – oh, but the edible art you could be creating…

NO!!!! Such blasphemy on Fluther!

wuh?

I pretty much only buy tomatoes in the summer from the farmer’s market. But we also get fruit flies in the summer. So I had to start keeping them in the fridge against my will because the flies make my roommate crazy.

I tend to store already ripe, store-bought tomatoes in the fridge because if I don’t the cats knock them on the floor and the dogs will eat them. That leaves me with no tomatoes at all and a mess on the floor to clean up.

When I have tomato vines growing I tend to pick the ripe tomatoes a few hours before I plan to eat them, as long as the possums aren’t taking bites out of them.

I keep mine in the fridge because they rot too fast on the cupboard. I can taste them, hiding under all that cheese on my sandwich.

Absolutely not. Gross. That makes the sugars crystallize, and then the tomato tastes awful.

No .. the best way is to keep them at room temperature.