Tomatoes are a staple in many dishes, whether you’re making a rich pasta sauce, a crisp salad, or a warm, comforting soup.
When ripe, tomatoes have a tangy taste that works well on its own or blended into recipes. However, once past their prime, that fantastic flavour rapidly disappears.
Properly storing tomatoes is vital to maintaining freshness, otherwise, they can swiftly turn soft, mushy, and tasteless. This makes tomatoes one of the most wasted foods in the UK, with roughly 733 million discarded annually.
While it may seem sensible to keep tomatoes chilled, storage experts at Urban Locker have suggested an easy trick to prolong freshness, prevent food waste, and save you money, reports the Express.
The surprising technique for more flavoursome tomatoes is to store them with the stems pointing downwards.
Elizabeth Adams, a storage expert from Urban Locker, explained: “This may seem like a minor detail, but if you want your tomatoes to last longer and cut down on food wastage, this little hack can help.
“Placing tomatoes with their stem-side down helps to prevent moisture loss and slows down the ripening process.”
This storage trick is all down to how tomatoes grow. Tomatoes have a weak point where the stem is attached, a location that’s more permeable to air and bacteria compared to the rest of the skin.
By storing stem-side down, we can limit excess moisture from entering through this opening, helping to prevent your tomatoes from going bad.
Elizabeth said: “At room temperature, this small adjustment can help your tomatoes last for several days longer.”
We’re often told to refrigerate all produce, but tomatoes keep their tang when left out on the counter. Chilled environments may dull the tomato’s taste by damaging its cellular structure.
Elizabeth advised: “Always store your tomatoes in a cool, dry place away from direct sunlight, but never in the fridge.”
She also suggested an extra step for after your grocery shop: “Take them out of the container that came with them from the supermarket and put them on a flat surface stem-side down.
“If you have tomatoes on the vine, remove the vine because one bad tomato can spoil the rest.
“If you notice that one of your tomatoes is overripening at a quicker rate than the others remove it, as tomatoes release ethylene gas which can speed up the ripening process for all of them.”