Several times this summer, picked tomatoes sitting on a counter have developed bad spots after a few days. We have all the frozen tomatoes and sauce our freezer can hold, so I was wondering if temporarily storing them in the refrigerator would prevent the bad spots from appearing before I could deliver them to friends or our weekly food bank. (I can’t leave ripe tomatoes on the vine or the critters will nibble at them.)
I know the conventional wisdom is that refrigeration will ruin a tomato’s taste:
http://blog.foodnetwork.com/he...
But a little internet surfing produced this article:
http://www.seriouseats.com/201...
which seemed reasonable, so I performed a very modest test of my own. I took two similar freshly picked ripe tomatoes from a number of different varieties, stored one of each in a bag on the top (warmest) shelf in the fridge, and the others in a similar bag on the kitchen counter. At mealtimes I extracted one of the same variety from each bag, (letting the cooled ones come to room temperature ~78° this week) and tasted the raw fruit.
In most cases (as listed below) there was very little difference after one or two days in the fridge, and when I followed up by putting salad dressing on each, the difference was even less. So except for those I am going to use immediately, I guess I will use the refrigerator for temporary storage. Now your tastebuds may well be more sensitive than mine, so I recommend that you try a similar test yourself before entrusting your precious toms to the icebox!
Nepal tomato (1 day in the fridge) no difference
Patio tomato (2 days) a little difference
Pink Ping Pong tomato (2days) very little difference
Cherokee Purple tomato (1 day) some difference
Cherokee Purple tomato (2 days) a definite difference
Mountain Fresh tomato (1 day) no difference
Red Pear tomato (2 days) very little difference
SunGold tomato (2 days) some difference
Pineapple tomato (2 days) a little difference
