Do you store tomatoes on the counter or in the fridge?

[Robin Garr]

Damn! And I trusted Alton Brown. How about you? Do you store your heirlooms on the counter or in the fridge?

Why You Should Refrigerate Tomatoes and Ignore Anyone Who Says Otherwise
People, even experts, sweat that you should never put a tomato in the fridge. They are wrong. Here's the follow-up to our tomato-storage tests from earlier in the summer, with some basic tips for how you really should store your tomatoes.
http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/09/why- ... atoes.html

On the counter. If we put ours all in the fridge, there would be little room for anything else. Well, I guess I could freeze them or make sauce on a daily basis, but that ain't happening.
Maybe I'll do my own test but frankly I'm on fresh tomato overload right now.

I try not to refrigerate tomatoes. If a tomato is perfectly ripe, and I don't expect to eat it tomorrow, I take to basement. If overloaded with tomatoes, will refrigerate the ripest ones, and then use for a sauce. Only a true doofus leaves a ripe tomato for 4 days to rot.

I leave them on the counter but his point about the definition of 'room temperature' changing over time is well taken.

That said, tomatoes are always my absolute priority for the menu planning and I usually cook them within a few days (at most) of purchase from the farmers market.

If I do buy tomatoes from the supermarket for roasting and treating roughly flavor-wise, I don't mind putting them in the refrigerator. But those are such a different product from 'real' tomatoes.

[Robin Garr]

I leave them on the counter but his point about the definition of 'room temperature' changing over time is well taken.

I have often said the same about red wines being properly served at "room temperature."

I never refrigerate tomatoes but its only because I think they are terrible cold (like good white Burgundy) and leaving them out guarantees they are at the temperature I want to eat them. I have no idea if leaving them out is actually the right thing to do but they don't last long at my house so I don't think its a huge deal leaving them out.

Both; on the counter as long as possible. With two of us, even with many give aways, we sometimes can't keep up.

I have always kept tomatoes on the counter, but I may be rethinking that decision now.

-Paul W.

Counter unless really really ripe and I need to keep it for a day or two. I don't always use a whole tomato; cut tomatoes go in the fridge, wrapped in plastic wrap.

[Jenise]

The only tomatoes I leave out are underripe ones. Any that are ripe enough get refrigerated. It stops, or at least way slows down, further ripening and I'm not interested in soft or rotting tomatoes.

What Jenise said.

Currently they're on the vine until minutes before they're on the salad plate.

During winter when I buy tomatoes from the supermarket they're stored in the fridge.

We're pretty casual about this, sometimes storing in the fridge, sometimes on the counter (particularly when there are too many for the fridge to easily hold).

The point on "room temperature" is a very good one. We have our A/C off between 8 AM and 4 PM on most summer days. The house will heat up to the low to mid 80's on hot days, and that's a lot higher than the 73° mentioned in the article.