When your countertop is overflowing with tomatoes, it’s time to start finding ways to preserve them for the cold winter months when the only tomatoes in the grocery stores are the mealy, flavorless ones.
Roasting is one of my favorite ways to preserve the flavors of August. It requires little effort and adds so much to simple winter meals.
Begin by preheating the oven to 300 degrees and preparing a parchment-lined baking sheet. Slice tomatoes in half and toss in a large bowl with sea salt and a good drizzle of olive oil. Arrange in a single layer on the baking sheet and place in oven for 4 hours or until they’ve shrunken up a bit in size and look as though they’ve begun to caramelize.
Remove from oven and enjoy immediately in pasta or along with a salad. Or to save for winter, place the entire baking sheet in the freezer for 30 minutes or until tomatoes are frozen through. Then remove from baking sheet and place in storage bags. Date and return to freezer until ready to use.
Enjoy!
6 Comments
August 22, 2008 at 9:44 am
Great idea. I have a couple on my counter right now that are about to go bad. I’ll try this, this weekend.
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August 25, 2008 at 9:21 am
Can this be done for any variety of tomatoes? I use vine tomatoes.
September 1, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Yum. I just roasted some sweet baby tomatoes and they are so good. Thanks for the freezing tip.
September 4, 2008 at 11:49 am
[...] for pointers on handling your tomatoes, see these helpful tips from The Humble Gourmand and roasting instructions from The District [...]
September 13, 2008 at 1:02 am
I’ll come back to this later…
September 27, 2008 at 12:34 pm
And now I have. Can I steal it for my website?