Roasting Tomatoes

Time to share with you what I think is the best use of surplus farm fresh and vine ripened tomatoes: Oven roasted tomatoes. Its a mostly hands-off process that yields a savory umami type ingredient, or condiments for all sorts of dishes. I’ll share my process, and some photos and some recipe ideas too!

Cherry Tomatoes, Grape Tomatoes sliced open. Some of the seed cavities are sealed off in this photos, others I got right. they dry out more evenly when you expose the seeds.

1. Cut tomatoes in half and arrange on baking sheet cut side up.

   I recommend cherry tomatoes, Grape tomatoes and plum size tomatoes for this (Juliets and valentines are especially good this way). You’ll get best results if you expose the seeds to the air as you cut. A trick for this: so if your tomato is ‘lobed’ you’ll want to cut on the high ridge of the lobe rather than in a valley. It takes some tries, but you can find the sweet spot on each one.

2. Drizzle with olive oil and salt

3. Add herbs and garlic

   Rosemary, sage, basil, garlic, chives all work well here! Don’t chop garlic too small as it may burn prematurely if so.

4. Place baking sheet uncovered on oven rack at 250 degrees F.

5. Monitor the drying process closely

   I recommend setting a timer for every 30 minutes to make sure you dry roast them to the right level (right= your preference here). *You’ll also need to snack on the crispy ones along the edges each time you open the oven door. The process can take 2-3 hours at depending on size of tomato, and your oven.

   Once done, the tomatoes will be wrinkled. I like to look for dried but not hard or crispy, but also not watery.

6. Storage Options

   1. pack tomatoes into a glass jar, and top with olive oil, store in the refrigerator.

   2. OR Place tomatoes into a ziploc bag or deli container and freeze.

   3. There are probably options for canning them for shelf stable, but I am not an expert at this, so I wont recommend that here.

7. How To Use

   Remove from cold storage and heat up a skillet. Fry them up until the edged brown and slightly crispy and warmed.

   1. Pastas! Blend into a cream sauce! Croque Monsieur! Add to Pimento Cheese! Pizza!

   2. Best BLT ever: Toasted Local Sourdough, Mayonnaisse, Goat Cheese, Arugula, Bacon, Roasted Tomatoes. (B.A.T. is more like it!)

Tomatoes with herbs, olive oil and salt ready to go into the oven.

A finished tray of mostly ‘Valentine’ tomatoes. Valentine is a variety that is prolific, but the tomatoes fall off the vine readily, so I end up processing a bunch of the unmarketable ones for myself.