Tomato Season Guide: How to Buy, Store, Prep & Preserve Tomatoes
If you grew up in the country like I did, you know there’s nothing better than a homegrown tomato in the middle of summer. Eat them straight off the vine, slice them up to serve fresh alongside your Sunday dinner, or add some sweet cherry tomatoes to your pasta salad for lunch – or my favorite, make a tomato sandwich with a perfectly ripe red tomato.
Fresh home-grown tomatoes are one of life’s greatest simple pleasures. And if you can’t grow your own tomatoes right now, the farmer’s market is the next best thing!
So when your counter starts filling up with fresh tomatoes faster than you can use them, what do you actually do with them all?
That’s what today’s guide is for. Whether you grew them, bought a whole flat at the farmers market, or just want to know if that sad grocery tomato is worth taking home, here’s everything — buying, storing, prepping, preserving, serving, and a stack of real recipes to put them to use.
When Are Tomatoes in Season?
Tomatoes hit their peak from June through September, with July and August being the real glory days if you’re growing your own or shopping local. May and October can still turn up decent tomatoes depending on where you live, but the flavor gets noticeably milder outside the peak window. If a tomato tastes like nothing in February, that’s not the store’s fault — it’s just not tomato season.
How to Buy Tomatoes
You don’t need to be an expert to pick a good tomato. You just need to slow down for about ten seconds at the produce stand.
- Pick it up. A good tomato feels heavy for its size. If it feels light and hollow, put it back.
- Check the skin. You want it smooth and taut, with no cracks, wrinkles, or soft spots.
- Smell the stem end. This is the trick nobody tells you — a good tomato smells like a tomato even before you cut into it.
- Don’t obsess over color. A little green near the stem late in the season is completely normal and doesn’t mean it’s underripe.
- Skip the refrigerated case. If your grocery store keeps its tomatoes chilled, the flavor’s already started to go flat before it ever reaches your cart.
How to Store Tomatoes
This is the one everybody gets wrong: never put an unripe tomato in the refrigerator. Cold stops the ripening process cold (no pun intended, but I’ll take it). In fact, I would caution you to not ever put a tomato into the fridge unless it’s leftover after having been cut. However, here are some good rules to follow:
- Keep tomatoes at room temperature, stem side down, out of direct sunlight
- Once a tomato is fully ripe, a day or two in the fridge is fine if you need to buy yourself some time — just let it come back to room temperature before you eat it
- Store them away from onions, which will speed up spoilage if they’re sitting right next to each other
How to Prep Tomatoes
Nothing fancy here, just a few things that make life easier.
- Wash tomatoes right before you use them, not before you store them
- To peel one: score a small X on the bottom, drop it in boiling water for about 30 seconds, then straight into an ice water bath. The skin will slide right off. This is especially helpful if you are preserving large amounts of tomatoes in one go.
- Core with a paring knife or a tomato corer
- To seed: halve the tomato and gently squeeze it, cut side down, over a bowl
How to Preserve Tomatoes
If your kitchen counter looks anything like mine did last August, you know the real question isn’t how do I eat these — it’s how do I keep from wasting any of them. This is where preserving comes in, and it’s a lot less intimidating than it sounds.
- Canning. Tomatoes can be canned whole, crushed, or stewed, in a water bath or pressure canner depending on the recipe and what else you’re adding to the jar.
- Freezing. You can freeze tomatoes whole and unpeeled, right on a tray. Once they’re frozen, the skins slip off on their own — no blanching required.
- Drying. Halved tomatoes, low and slow in the oven or a dehydrator, make an incredible pantry staple that lasts all winter.
Related: Canning Stewed Tomatoes is my go-to method and the one I use every single year with whatever the garden hands me.
If you want something with a little more kick for your pantry shelf, my Enchilada Sauce for Canning puts up roasted tomatoes and peppers together, and it’s one of those recipes I look forward to making every fall.
related (affiliate link): Everything Worth Preserving: The Complete Guide for Food Preservation at Home
How to Serve Tomatoes
Truthfully, a ripe summer tomato barely needs a recipe. Here are five of my favorite ways to eat them:
- Thick sliced with flaky salt and good olive oil
- Diced into a quick salsa with onion and lime
- Layered into a BLT, still warm from the counter
- Roasted whole with garlic until they collapse
- Simmered down into a simple sauce
The Perfect Tomato Sandwich
If you grew up in the South, you already know there’s really only one way to make a proper tomato sandwich, and I will die on this hill: it has to be Duke’s mayonnaise. Not Hellmann’s. Not Miracle Whip. Duke’s. It’s the best, haha.
This isn’t really a recipe so much as an assembly — but there’s a right way to do it.
What you need:
- 2 slices soft white bread
- Duke’s mayonnaise
- 1 large, ripe tomato, sliced thick
- Salt and black pepper, to taste
How to make it:
- Lay both slices of bread out flat and spread each one edge to edge with Duke’s. Don’t be shy about it.
- Layer on thick slices of tomato — thick enough that you need both hands and a napkin.
- Salt and pepper generously. This step is not optional.
- Press the sandwich together, cut it on the diagonal if you want to be fancy about it, and eat it standing over the sink or with plenty of napkins on the side.
A note on tomatoes: this only works with one that’s actually ripe. A hard, pale grocery store tomato will ruin the whole experience, so save this one for peak season and a tomato that’s earned it.
I also love a fresh slice of tomato in between the halves of a buttered, homemade biscuit leftover from breakfast. If you’ve never tried this, you’re missing out!
Serving Size & Tips
One serving of tomatoes is about 1 medium tomato (roughly 150g), or 1 cup chopped. Tomatoes are a good source of vitamin C and potassium, and they’re one of the best dietary sources of lycopene, an antioxidant that actually becomes more available to your body once the tomato is cooked — so that marinara sauce is doing you just as many favors as the fresh slices.
A Few Recipes to Try
Here are some of my own tried-and-true recipes that put fresh (or canned) tomatoes to good use.
#1 Tomato Cheese Spread
A holiday appetizer I make year after year, and a great way to use up a jar of tomatoes you canned earlier in the season. Creamy, a little sharp, and always disappears fast at a gathering.
#2 Peppercorn Ranch Pasta Salad
Tender pasta, crisp broccoli, chickpeas, and juicy grape tomatoes, all tossed in peppercorn ranch. Makes a big bowl, so it’s perfect for potlucks and make-ahead lunches.
#3 Macaroni and Pea Salad with Cheese
An old family favorite with sweet peas, sharp cheddar, olives, and grape tomatoes. This one’s been in our lunch and potluck rotation for years.
#4 Easy Pesto Pasta Salad
A simple pesto pasta salad you can dress up with whatever’s on hand — grape tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, or olives all work beautifully here.
#5 Gazpacho Juice
If you’ve never juiced a tomato before, this one’s worth trying. It tastes like salsa in a glass, and it’s a fun way to use up extras with the kids.
Related: Looking for more ideas? I rounded up 25 Fresh Tomato Recipes for when your counter is really overflowing.
Tomato season doesn’t last forever, so enjoy it while it’s here — sliced, salted, and eaten standing at the counter if that’s what the moment calls for.
Download the Printable Tomato Produce Guide
A free printable Tomato Season Guide from The Homemaker’s Society — a two-page at-a-glance card covering when tomatoes are in season, how to buy, store, prep, and preserve them, plus serving size, five simple ways to serve them, and a quick Marinated Summer Tomatoes recipe.
How to Download
Just fill out the form below and you’ll receive your free printable Tomato Seasonal Guide right in your inbox. If you’re a member of the Homemaker’s Society, you can download your copy instantly below.
