Freezing tomatoes

http://southernfood.about.com/od/tomatoes/a/green_tomatoes.htm



http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/freeze/tomato_green.html

We often freeze tomatoes for saucing. They come out rather mushy when defrosted , so Im not sure about chow chow where the idea is to keep some "Tooth" in the veggire. How about a vinegar brine and turne them into refrigerator pickles? They wont get as mushy

I did that last summer with my big crop of green tomatoes that refused to ripen before the snows hit the area.

Can't say that pickled green tomatoes are my favorite... not sure if it was the brine recipe or if they were just too green.

She wants to make chow chow, which is a "Sweet and sour" mixture of pickled veggies. In the Dutch country we usually use cider vinegar, apple cider, some sugar, cinnamon and cloves and all sorts of cooked and raw veggies.
Cooked
fava beans and limas
kidney beans
sugar snap peas
pearl onions

Raw
Celery strips, Melon rinds
carrot sections
cucumebr slices and juliennes
cauliflower chunks

Weve never added green tomatoes

also we add whole pepper corns (Telicherry holds up really well) and some folks add hungarian wax peppers and one jalepeno per jar

These are best made as a refrigerator pickle mix. If its done up as a canned treat, all the veggies are put in the sweet brine raw and then brought up to a canning temp and lidded up.

Chow chow is a great side dish for meat loaf or ham steaks

Yep, there's a topic on chow chow recipes around here someplace. I'll see if I can find it and post a link.

The best way is to freeze them in a low temperatures: deep freeze. But you can use them in cooking only because they will be very soft after defrosting.