What would you make with underripe tomatoes?

Do you know that if you have harvested tomatoes while they are still green, you can use an ancient technique to ripen and store them?

I came across a pin on Pinterest for keeping tomatoes fresh for months without refrigeration or pasteurisation.

The ancient technique requires wood ash as it has antifungal and antibacterial properties. I did a search on YouTube and found a video about this storage technique. I am glad I did because I can spot two mistakes in the above image. The tomatoes are touching one another and the box. To do it correctly, you will need:

-tomatoes that are healthy, undamaged and not overripe

-a plastic or wooden container or a cardboard box.

-enough wood ash to cover all the tomatoes you need to store.

These are the steps to do it correctly:

-place a thin layer of wood ash in the box.

-arrange the tomatoes in a row on top of the wood ash.

-there must be a space between the box and the tomatoes.

-ensure that the tomatoes do not touch each other.

-pour wood ash over the tomatoes.

-they must be completely covered by the wood ash.

-cover the container and leave it in a cool and dark space without sunlight.

-when you need to cook with tomatoes, take them out of the box and shake off the wood ash.

-wash them before eating or preparing them for your dish.

-before storing the box, make sure that the rest of the tomatoes are fully covered with the wood ash.

You can watch the video I shared below to find out how it is done but I am writing the process out just in case the link to the video is broken and this useful ancient technique is lost. According to the content creator, you can use the same method to store:

-eggs for a year.

-apples for months.

She also shared other ways you can make use of wood ash for gardening. You can stop watching 1 hour and 12 minutes into the video, as the rest are repetitive.

Through my search, there are other food items that you can preserve with wood ash to keep them dry and prevent spoilage. You can click on the links I provided to find out how it is done and if the food still taste good:

-Cooked meat: from the video I watched, it does not taste good.

-Ginger and other root vegetables: it is as shown in the above video. The dry environment created by ash inhibits sprouting.

-Grains and seeds: ash can help to free grains from insects.

-Cheese: review is good.

You will find the additional information in the following article useful if you would like to adopt this preservation method in a safe and correct manner:

10 Best Wood Ash Methods for Native Food Storage

I usually save such useful cooking tips on my Fruits, Greens, Bulbs and Tubers board or at my Storage board. From there you will also learn how to freeze your tomatoes or preserve them by making them into tomato sauce which you can keep in the freezer for up to three months. Unripe, or green, tomatoes are excellent for making jams, chutneys, and pickles due to their firm texture and tart, tangy flavour. You should be able to find some recipes from one of my Cooking Tips boards.

But just in case you missed it, check out the recipes for pickled tomatoes:

Do you like soup the way Chinese boil them? When I boil it, I like to use the most under ripe tomatoes I have in my fridge. It makes the soup taste more sour which is the way I like drinking it. This is how it is prepared.

I prefer to use pork soup bone to boil the soup. It will taste just as good without peppercorns added. You can check out the other optional ingredients you can use to make this soup with vs the way Westerners boil it.

Most cooking websites provides link to recipes that requires a particular ingredient. My favourite go to website for recipes is Woks of Life. Do a search there for tomatoes and will find recipes for Asian and Western dishes. You can try that on cooking websites you often visit.

You can also find recipes for tomatoes from your phone. You can find such apps by doing a search for “apps enter ingredients get recipe” on Google. Through this search, I received a summarized answer from AI Overview:

“Apps that generate recipes from ingredients you have on hand include SuperCook, BigOven, and Allrecipes.”

Supercook introduced its site as a zero waste recipe generator. Watch how you can make use of this apps or its website to generate recipes.

I think this is so cool.