How to Keep Tomatoes Fresh for Longer

If you want to get a room full of food lovers fired up, announce to everyone that you

refrigerate your tomatoes and watch the vitriol flow. After all, refrigerating tomatoes is an absolute no-no—right?

As Harold McGee, our go-to guy for all food science questions, laid out in his book On Food and Cooking: “Tomatoes came originally from a warm climate, and should be stored at room temperature.” He notes that anything other than fully ripe tomatoes really suffer after refrigeration in every way—flavor development, coloration, and mealy texture.

However, the key phrase to pay attention to here is “anything other than fully ripe tomatoes.” Temperatures below 55° F (like the inside of your refrigerator) halt tomatoes’ flavor-producing enzyme activity. McGee notes that while fully ripe tomatoes are still susceptible to flavor loss when placed in the refrigerator, some of that enzyme activity can come back if they are allowed to recover for a day or two at room temperature before eating.

Serious Eats did extensive tomato storage research and taste testing and found essentially the same thing: “Because peak-season market tomatoes are already perfectly ripe, they benefit very little from extra time in the heat, and in many cases they are harmed by it, while the refrigerator does minimal harm once tomatoes are ripe.” They kept tomatoes in the fridge for up to 4 days no problem.

Takeaway: If you have a cool spot in your home, like a wine cellar or root cellar, with temperatures in the 55° F to 70° F range, store fully ripe tomatoes there. They’ll keep well for a day or two, and you won’t risk disrupting any flavor-producing enzyme activity. If, like us, you don’t have a wide variety of temperature zones in your home, rest assured that fully ripe tomatoes will survive refrigeration, just plan for some room temperature recovery time.

But what about tomatoes that aren’t quite ripe? You definitely shouldn’t put those tomatoes in the refrigerator. They need to stay at room temperature, ideally in a single layer out of direct sunlight. And most importantly for keeping them fresher longer, store them stem side down while they finish ripening. America’s Test Kitchen purports that the benefits are twofold: blocking where the tomato’s stem was prevents moisture from leaving the tomato and blocks air (and thus mold and bacteria) from entering the tomato.

You might have heard not to store tomatoes upside-down because the “shoulders” (the area around the stem scar) are delicate and susceptible to bruising. If you’re worried about that, America’s Test Kitchen has a solution: Place a piece of tape over the stem scar. They found it worked as well as storing tomatoes upside down. 

So, it's okay not to gobble up all your tomatoes immediately. Not that we're stopping you.

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