Make Any Tomatoes Taste Better With This Brilliant Little Trick

We all know by now we shouldn’t put tomatoes in the refrigerator, right? The colder the temperature of their storage, the more flavor tomatoes lose. That’s why the ones you buy at the grocery store are never as good as fresh-picked ones. Sometimes, though, it can seem like the refrigerator is the only place available. Maybe we’re growing our own and ended up with a huge crop; maybe we need to store them for a long amount of time; maybe we just got over-excited and bought a ton! Whatever our reasons, we can’t always just set them out on our counters. So how can we refrigerate our tomatoes without sacrificing flavor? Quartz has the answer: a hot water bath.

Yes, give your fresh-picked tomatoes a bath before storing them in the refrigerator! Specifically, heat water to 125 degrees Fahrenheit, then place the tomatoes in the warm water for five minutes. Let them come back to room temperature, then go about your business of storing them in the fridge like you did before you knew better!

So why does this work? Quartz explains the science behind the danger of chilling and this process:

This morning (August 19), plant physiologist Jinhe Bai presented his team’s findings (video) and demonstrated how the process works at a meeting of the American Chemical Society. The group from the U.S. Department of Agriculture took tomatoes fresh off the stem and [. . . put them through the heating process . . .] The heated tomatoes retained more of their flavor and, according to Bai, tasted better than those that weren’t heated before chilling.

In order to prevent tomatoes from getting too ripe on the road between farm, supermarket, and table, they’re normally stored and shipped at cold temperatures, generally between 41 and 55 degrees. But this stifles the enzymes that produce the aromas that make our plump, juicy friends taste so good.

The heating process appears to protect those precious, tasty enzymes. Obviously, this at-home heating solution will only work for fresh-picked tomatoes; the ones in the supermarket have already been chilled. However, if you’d like to see this practice more widely adopted, talk to your local grocery store! Supply and demand dictates change, and if customers demand tasty tomatoes, the stores will follow.

Learn more over on Quartz’s original article, then tell us what you think! Do you still store tomatoes in the refrigerator? What do you think of this heating solution?