Are you overwhelmed with excess tomatoes from your garden this fall? Here's the answer! Much easier than making and canning salsa, tomato juice or sauce or paste, and much more versatile! There is absolutely nothing like roasting tomatoes to bring out the best tomato flavor and in my book, there is virtually no other way to freeze tomatoes that will result in as fine a product as this.
While Roma tomatoes are the best for this recipe, as they're drier, any tomato will do nicely. I used Romas this year, and made salsa from the Ruetger's and the Early Girls - those that didn't get eaten as BLTs or tomato sandwiches, that is!
Slice your Romas in half, and remove the seeds and juice. Lay them out on however many cookie sheets you think you might need. The bottom of a broiler pan works great too. I can only do two pans at a time, due to oven size. You can crowd them together on the pan, because they shrink quite a bit while roasting.
Get out a big mixing bowl, and put about 1/2 to 3/4 of a cup of olive oil in it. Add some sea salt, some pepper, some celery flakes, some parsley flakes, some rosemary and some basil. Measurements? Well, I used probably half a teaspoon of celery flakes, salt and pepper, and maybe a teaspoon and a half or so of the others. Add about a tablespoon of minced garlic and some of the oil from the jar too. When I use fresh garlic, I use probably 4 cloves, pressed. Mix it all up, then dump all the tomatoes in. Mix them up real good with your hands, then lay them back out onto the pans. Any leftover oil mixture, just put over the top of the tomatoes.
Put them in the oven at about 250, and let 'em roast. I like them a bit more done than not, so I figure about 5 hours, or when they're dried and starting to carmelize but still somewhat soft. In about an hour's time, your house will smell fabulous!
These can be frozen, or stored in the refrigerator. To freeze, let them cool then place the pans in the freezer so the tomatoes will freeze individually. Then put them into zip lock bags or plastic containers and return them to the freezer. To store them in the refrigerator, I prefer to put them into pint jars then fill the jars with olive oil. Figure about 2-3 weeks this way... only 4-5 days without the olive oil. Use the excess oil when the tomatoes are gone for sauteeing or as dip for bread. I don't recommend canning these because the oil will cause the lids to not seal properly.
You can remove the skins after they're roasted, if you prefer.
These are fantastic on toasted breads as an appetizer, or to add to your Italian red sauces, or cut up in pasta salads. They go nicely in soups and stews, too. Quite a few of these get eaten plain here, by themselves, before they ever even get to the freezer!
If you're using tomatoes other than Romas, cut them into wedges and be sure to remove the seeds and juices. They may take a bit longer to roast, because the flesh is juicier, but they'll taste just as good.
Feel free to experiment with any herbs that you might prefer, toward recipes you might like to use them in.
Enjoy!
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