Yes there are many ways to preserve tomatoes other than sauce. But preserved whole slices? No. Any method of preservation will affect the texture.

However whole canned tomatoes can be removed from the jar, drained well and sliced. Will they have the same texture as a fresh one? No way. But will they taste good on a sandwich? Yes. You can even add Pickle Crisp to them for a bit more firm texture but it still won't be like a fresh slice.

Many bread and freeze their sliced green tomatoes for later fried green tomatoes but even those will be a little mushier when thawed.

Dried tomato slices, even when rehydrated in tomato juice (which takes some time) will be chewy in part but mushier in the center and often taste more like the tomato juice they were soaked in than anything else.

So the compromises that works best for many when talking sandwiches are things like home-made chunky ketchup, canned crushed tomatoes drained, a stewed tomato relish spread, thick salsa, or pickled tomato chunks.

Thick tomato salsa, drained and spread on most any sandwich meat is perfect.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: NCHFP - Ways to can tomatoes

I know exactly what you are talking about. In my quest to find something that could substitute for those soulless January tomatoes, I started looking at recipes. Most of them were full of allspice and cinnamon, and tasted more like some perverse catsup than tomatoes. So after lots of tweaking and tasting, I came up with this. It's not a fresh beefsteak, but in January it satisfies that craving, and it's not bad on a BLT. As Digdirt would say, this is a cooking recipe, not a canning recipe. I expect it's way too dense to heat process correctly, but it does keep in the fridge for a good long time. I bet that you could freeze it, too.

SUN DRIED TOMATO JAM

1 8ounce Jar SD Tomatoes, packed in Oil
1/2 Onion, thinly sliced
1 Clove Garlic, minced
2 Tablespoons Sugar
1/4 Cup Red Wine Vinegar
1/2 Cup Water
1/2 Cup Chicken Broth
1/2 Teaspoon Dried Thyme
1/2 Teaspoon Kosher Salt
1/2 Teaspoon freshly ground Black Pepper

Drain the Tomatoes, reserving the Oil, medium chop. Saut� the Tomatoes, Onion and Garlic in about a tablespoon of the reserved Oil until the Onions are tender, about 5 minutes. Add all remaining ingredients and bring to a boil, stirring frequently. Reduce heat and simmer covered for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove the cover and continue to simmer until the liquid is absorbed, about 30 minutes. Remove from the heat to cool, mixture should have a very jammy consistency. Store in a jar in the refrigerator.

Steve

There is a way but most folks wouldn't eat the finished product, nor would they have the budget for the equipment. Irradiation, it kills all microbial life which is what causes tomatoes to spoil. If a slice of tomato is sealed in plastic and irradiated, it will stay a slice of tomato for many years, but would you eat it?

Rehydrated tomato slices aren't the same as fresh, but once you figure out how to use them, they are really good. For sandwiches, you'd only want about 10 minutes in warm water. Really big ones can be cut in half before rehydrating.

Beyond slices, half-dried tomatoes, typcially made with halves of paste types like Roma, are usually the first thing gone from our freezer. We have a dehydrator but I've seen directions for doing them in a slow oven. You dry them only about halfway, then freeze them.

I make tomato sauce, but every year we dry more and more. The dried tomatoes are super-easy to cook with, and drying is easier than canning. By the time the tomatoes come in, time is in such short supply.

A few years ago, Martha Stewart did an episode of her show devoted to her trip to Russia and ultimate Kazakhstan to watch her then-boyfriend, a Microsoft millionaire, lift off to the International Space Station.

One of the segments on the program was Martha's tour of a larger Farmer's Market in Moscow. A highlight was a stand that featured the most beautiful pickled vegetables of all kinds, things you might expect to find, like cucumbers or peppers, and things you wouldn't dream of, such as tomatoes, mushrooms, corn on the cob, and watermelon fruit with rind.

What intrigued and impressed me, and Martha, was how fresh and vibrant everything looked, even though it was preserved. Colors were still vivid, and most of the pickles looked like fresh-picked produce. Most things were pickled whole, often as nature made them, for example, carrots and beets were pickled with the leaf stalks left on.

I was intrigued by this, but never pursued the idea. From what I gather, this must be a bacterial fermentation similar to the method used to make Kim Chee in Korea or vaguely like the way sauerkraut is made. Essentially, it involves allowing the produce to undergo a fermentation in a salt brine.

I found this article online about pickling tomatoes, but a google search of "Russian Pickled *******", with the "******" being the name of whatever vegetable or fruit you would want to pickle seems to bring up recipes.

I have no clue whether or not this method would be considered safe by current U.S. standards, nor do I know how the results would taste, but I do think it might be one approach the O.P. could experiment with in the search for a method of preserving tomatoes.

Here is a link that might be useful: Article about Russian Pickled Tomatoes with photos and directions

I'm wondering if Dave would share the recipe for the "salsa spread" for sandwiches? Just Annie's salsa? Or something without the peppers and onions, maybe a small amount of sugar, more like a jam or a chunky ketchup?

I tried a tomato-pineapple jam last year, it didn't go over really well (not savory, not sweet, just weird). But I've got a quart of frozen tomatoes, was wondering if I could make a sandwich spread that tastes better than store-bought tomatoes while I'm waiting for the first of the season.

I freeze raw tomatoes whole -- just wash them and stick them in a bag. Then I have sliced the frozen tomato and let it thaw and used on a sandwich. It's pretty good -- You could try one bag this year and see if you like it.

I can all kinds of tomato products including sliced green tomatoes for frying , and dried toms . But for use in salads , sandwhiches , dips , savory cheese cakes and tarts , I freeze slow roasted toms . Cookie sheets , paste toms , olive oil , garlic , herbs of your choice ,and balsamic vinegar ( or whatever you want ). They freeze well , and the left over juice ( after defrosting ) is excellant in a vinargaret .

Russian vegetables are often actually fermented, not pickled with acid. As for tomatoes they can be easily fermented or pickled with vinegar. I don't understand why this could be considered unusual. Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland and all eastern europe preserve ripe tomatoes by pickling or fermentation.
Olga

I would suggest dehydrating your tomatoes, powdering them and using them to flavor your homemade bread. You can get quite a strong flavor of tomato this way. You could go a step further and dehydrate paste tomato halves. They will be like tomato jerky for you sandwich. When you're ready you can rehydrate them in a bit of hot water or grind them into a paste with a little added water. It won't be the texture but it should capture the taste somewhat.

I have only been getting ripe Red Robins so far this year. I've got a better boy almost there.

Back to the subject, The Red Robins are so small and not really that tasty so I put a few in my dehydrator and poked a whole in each one with a toothpick. They took 24 hours to dry.

I tasted one last night and said sandwich time! I had some leftover pork roast, so it was pork roast, Dukes Mayo, fresh sweet banana pepper, a sprinkle of onion powder, and dried tomatoes.

It was so good till I had to force myself not to eat a second one last night! Guess what I had for breakfast, another one!

My dehydrator is full of them now, they are so much better dried.

I am so glad that so many of you know what I am talking about. In my usual mad scientist way I think I am going to try every way of preserving tomato slices. At this point in the year though, I have seen so many of my ideas go awry that I won't presume to pre-judge any of the methods before I have actually tried them myself.

I have a recipe book here for canning all types of tomato preserves. I would imagine that tomato preserves are fairly delicious in place of ripe august tomatoes.

Olga, I have a friend that spent two years in the peace corps working in Moldova, and she was amazed at how everything there was pickled and preserved. How do you ferment the vegetables, what kinds of ingredients do you use to accomplish the task.

Oh, and pickling and preserving in the western world tends to stay away from pickling and fermenting things, in my experience, pickles and tomatoes are the only vegetable that is really canned over here, because of the desire for most vegetables to keep as close to their ripe flavor as possible, hence quick freezing for most home grown produce.

I can't find a recipe for processing just the tomato juice itself, to keep in a jar until I am ready to rehydrate my dried tomatoes, If I just took the juice of a tomato, and filled a jar with it, then used that juice to rehydrate the same variety of tomato it came from, would that work?

Most of the tomatoes I have growing are not paste tomatoes though, so I am going to have to find a way to preserve all of the brandywine, black, hybrid, and cherry tomatoes other than making a sauce. I would imagine that preserving non paste tomatoes would take a lot longer to reduce down to what was needed for sauce/preserves/catsup/ketchup/jelly.

But I'll be the first to admit this will be my first year canning tomatoes myself, and I know nothing. When I was growing up I watched my parents do it for a few years, and then they just started to buy ragu... *facepalm* Most of what was grown consisted of early girls, romas, and jet stars, no epic historical heirloom tomatoes to be had.