Tip of the Week- Using a Vacuum Sealer to to Preserve Tomatoes

I was chatting with my yoga students last week about how we preserve tomatoes. Every year is seems the process has more and easier options. Our preferred method uses a vacuum sealer and chest freezers.

This year's tomato harvest is slow to arrive due to the cooler than usual temperatures we are experiencing in Minnesota. We may have to harvest our tomatoes green and let them ripen. Once our tomatoes are ripe, either picked early green or ripe red on the vine, we will bring them indoors, wash and dry them and vacuum seal them in long bags. One of my students does this and doesn't wash them, making it even easier. 

Vacuum sealers run $20 to over $200. We purchased our Food Saver model from the local hardware store for around $99, on sale. We reuse bags when we can, washing and drying between uses. 

When we get to harvesting tomatoes I will make another blog post with an update on what we did and why. Might be fun to try something else this year. Stay tuned! 

Want to learn additional simple food preservation methods? Check out this great article at Mother Earth Living. http://www.motherearthliving.com/Cooking-Methods/food-preservation-methods-zmoz12sozmel