I recently bought two bags of cherry tomatoes on the vine from Safeway. After a few days in the refridgerator (oops! more on that later), they started looking wrinkly. Since they didn’t look good for eating in salad anymore, I decided to cook a few of them in a chicken dish I was making.
After throwing in a handful of the cherry tomatoes into the saute pan, and stirring for a few minutes, I noticed that the cherry tomatoes were plumping up again. After cooking my meal, I served myself and noticed that the cherry tomatoes did not shrivel up again, despite having been removed from the heat. I tried a bite and they were still great.
For the next handful, I put them in a small bowl and covered them with room temperature tap water. I microwaved the bowl for 60 seconds and checked on the tomatoes. Still a little wrinkly. I microwaved the bowl for another 45 seconds, and checked again. The wrinkles were gone, and the water temp was tepid.
I’m not sure what is happening – maybe it has something to do with the cherry tomato seed. But I was able to get a few more days of life out of my stash without sacrificing any of the taste!
(In writing this article, I also learned that tomatoes should not be refridgerated unless you’re trying to slow down the ripening of an already ripe tomato. Oops!)
