What do you do with too many tomatoes at the end of summer?

At the end of summer, tomatoes arrive in waves. The plant on the balcony finally gets going, the neighbour leaves a bag on the doorstep, the market stall sells off a crate of slightly split ones for almost nothing. It is a lovely problem, but it is a problem, because ripe tomatoes do not wait. The answer is triage: sort them by condition, then give each group the right job.

First, sort them

• Perfect, ripe, fragrant ones: eat raw, today and tomorrow.
• Soft, split or a little wrinkly: cook them, today.
• Firm but plentiful: freeze or turn into sauce for later.
• Anything mouldy or leaking: compost it. A mouldy tomato is no friend to its neighbours.

Keep the ones you'll eat soon at room temperature, stalk side down, out of the sun. Whether they belong in the fridge is its own debate.

Raw: the reason to have a glut at all

This is the brief season when tomatoes need almost nothing.

• Raw tomato pasta sauce. Chop ripe tomatoes, salt them, add garlic, basil and good olive oil, and leave them to sit while the pasta cooks. Toss with hot pasta. Our raw sauce page goes into detail.
• Panzanella. Ripe tomatoes, stale bread, red onion, cucumber, basil, oil and vinegar, left to soak into each other. A glut and stale bread solve each other.
• Tomatoes on toast. Grate a halved tomato onto toasted bread rubbed with garlic, with salt and oil. Breakfast, lunch or an aperitivo.
• A proper tomato salad. Thick slices, salt a few minutes ahead, then oil, a little red wine vinegar, oregano or basil. Mixed colours and sizes look generous.

Slow-roasting: for the tired and watery

Slow-roasting turns ordinary tomatoes into something jammy, sweet and intense.

Halve them, lay them cut side up on a tray, season with salt, a pinch of sugar if they are sharp, thyme or oregano, sliced garlic and a generous slug of olive oil. Roast low and slow until they have shrunk, wrinkled and caught a little at the edges, with the juices turned sticky.

Use them on toast with ricotta, in pasta, folded into an omelette, on pizza, in a grain salad, or blitzed into a sauce. Keep them in the fridge in a covered container and, as with other leftovers, the Food Standards Agency advises eating them within 48 hours or freezing them.

Quick passata or sauce for the freezer

You don't need a passata machine or a day of bottling.

• Quick passata. Roughly chop the tomatoes and cook them gently with a pinch of salt until they collapse. Push them through a sieve or food mill to remove skins and seeds. Simmer a little longer if it is watery.
• Simple sauce. Soften onion or garlic in olive oil, add chopped tomatoes, cook until thick and glossy, season. Skins can stay in; peeling is optional.

Cool it before it goes in the freezer, as the FSA advises for warm dishes, then freeze in portions you will actually use: small tubs, freezer bags laid flat, even ice-cube trays for a spoonful at a time. Label it with the date. Tomato sauce is one of the sauces that freeze best.

Home bottling and canning is a separate skill with its own food-safety rules. If you want to try it, follow an official guide closely; for most of us, the freezer is simpler.

Freezing tomatoes whole

The laziest method, and a very good one. Wash and dry the tomatoes, remove the stalks and freeze them whole in a bag. When you need them, run a frozen tomato under warm water and the skin slips off. They will be soft once thawed, so use them for cooking, not salads: soups, stews, sauces, braises.

A few more ideas

• Tomato and bread soup, in the spirit of Tuscan pappa al pomodoro.
• Tomato tart: puff pastry, a smear of mustard or pesto, sliced tomatoes, cheese, baked until golden.
• Roast tomatoes and chickpeas with cumin and chilli, finished with yoghurt.
• Shakshuka-style eggs cooked in a pan of tomatoes and peppers.
• Gazpacho, for a hot evening, blitzed with cucumber, pepper, bread, oil and vinegar.