Your Tomatoes Are Rotting Because You're Storing Them All Wrong

We've all seen our carefully selected, beautifully ripe farmers' market tomatoes turn into gross squishy blobs after a few too many days of, "I'm definitely eating those tomorrow."
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By Kim Fusaro, Glamour

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Photo by Mike Lorrig

We've all seen our carefully selected, beautifully ripe farmers' market tomatoes turn into gross squishy blobs after a few too many days of, "I'm definitely eating those tomorrow." But it turns out there's a really easy way to keep tomatoes from rotting--or at least slow down the process.

Flip 'em upside down.

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Photo by Kim Fusaro

Most people's instinct (including ours) is to store tomatoes (or any fruit) stem-side UP, but they'll last longer if you turn them stem-side down, says Anastaisa Cole Plakias a founding partner in Brooklyn Grange, which operates the world's largest rooftop soil farms, located on two roofs in New York City. (That's Anastaisa above, with all her upside-down tomatoes at an Ikea event yesterday.) The logic: The end the tomato's sitting on will ripen the fastest. The top of the tomato always ripens last, naturally, so it's the firmest, so the most suitable for bearing the weight of the fruit. If a tomato's sitting on its already ripe bottom, as the bottom continues to ripen, it will start to rot. So turning your tomatoes stem-side down should extend their shelf life.

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