Measure Free Hippie Cook

Roasted Tomatoes

7 September 2007 by Jean Johnson

The other evening while out on my bike I ran into friends who mentioned a neighbor was roasting tomatoes. It isn’t as though roasting veggies isn’t in my repertoire, but with the weather being so hot lately, the thought of heating an oven has not presented itself. But serendipity. Recent cloud cover has come, and now that we are moving into September the temps are dropping off.

I like to do slow roasts at 300 degrees or less, like even 200 and lower in the later stages so they don’t burn. It takes longer but the food responds beautifully by candying and caramelizing. You can see how nicely these tomatoes turned out.

All I did was oil my large cast iron skillet which gives superior results by far and a baking tray (a jelly roll pan with sides to keep the juices contained). The tomatoes were salad sized, not quite tennis balls, so I didn’t bother to core them–just slice them into halves. It took around 3 hours. They were fabulously superb spread with a tad of humus and topped with a spoonful of pesto.

Note on Getting Roasted Tomatoes Completely Dried: While some tomato halves emerge from the oven perfectly leathery and ready for the oil, most have residual moisture. Your choices are two here: 1) put them back in the oven at a very low temp like 150 so they can finish roasting without burning or 2) use a spatula to loosen them from the baking pans and lay them on those wire racks normally used to cook cakes and pies. Here you’ll be mimicking sun drying except them the drying will finish right there in your kitchen.

Note on Sun-dried Tomatoes: Americans new to the foodie world love sun-dried tomatoes in their jars of oil, whizzed into humus, tossed with pasta, and most any other way they can get the spendy, trendy critters. I would love to sun dry the way the Hopi used to do, spreading their peach halves out on the the sandstone bluffs surrounding their mesa homes, but I would worry about flies and figuring out screening seems like a chore.

Slow roasting in the oven is another way to reduce the moisture content in tomatoes. Once done they keep in the fridge in oil for several months–rather longer than they tend to last in a tomato lover’s home. Indeed, that’s another reason we love our sun-dried tomatoes, so. They’re drenched in oil.

< Go back