Say I cut up a tomato for a salad but only use half of it (leaving the other half intact). If I refrigerate it the texture goes to hell. Will the acidity of the tomato allow me to store it in a baggie on the counter for the next day or two without it going bad?
Depending on how new your fridge is (and how it controls humidity), try just leaving it there, plastic wrapping it and tupperwaring it. My old fridge did better if I put it in a Tupper but my new one does great if I just put it on a shelf (they mummify in the drawers)
Don’t take more than a day to use it, though. Or use it for cooking so the texture is not so much of an issue.
bon apetit!
I don’t know what the ambient temp is in your kitchen, but I am not getting a good feeling about just leaving it there.
Eat it.
It won’t go ‘bad’ in a day or two, but it’s going to leak. I agree with Ethilrist. Sprinkle a bit of salt on it and chow down.
Use the whole thing. You can’t have too much tomato in a salad.
I put it cut side down in a small bowl (like a nappie) or on a saucer (something china or glass) and then keep it in the crisper. It lasts a few days that way.
Four decades later, the ill-advised sequel to “How To Stuff A Wild Bikini” failed dismally as a means to revive Annette Funnicello’s career.
I’ve always stored them facedown on a small dish. It should be a dish flat enough to really “close” the tomato. Oh, and if we’re going to use the tomato for salad, then it gets cut through the poles (keeps better that way), but of course if you’re going to crush it on hard-crust bread or on toast* you have to cut equatorially even if you only intend to use half of it at the time.
- This is called “pa amb tomàquet”, “bread with tomato” in Catalan. In Spain sometimes the signs write it as “pamtumaca”, which is the approximate pronunciation. In most of the Mediterranean coast, sandwiches come with tomato by default; in the rest of Spain you have to ask for the tomato.
I don’t believe it can be done. Oh, you can use it, ok, once it’s been in the refrigerator, but it’s no longer a tomato. The taste of a tomato disappears so quickly that any delay renders them pretty much useless, except as a coloring agent. Don’t do it.