Slow-roasted Tomatoes

This time of year food blogs tend to focus on recipes intended for your garden surplus, namely tomatoes and zucchini. Those of you who garden know what I'm talking about: you can't give the stuff away fast enough, nor are there enough ways in which you can use them up.

Until now.

I actually first saw slow-roasted tomatoes mentioned sometime in the winter. I made a mental note right then and there to try them. After, of course, I'd eaten my fill of bruschetta with tomato and basil. Oh and roasted tomato soup. We're in mid-august which means we're just coming into the peak of tomato season here in Southern California (don't hate, we often grow tomatoes right up until christmas) and still they're coming. So when I realized that I had a whole slew of tomatoes sitting on my counter that were dangerously close to going over (oh dear lord noooooooooooooo), I decided it was time to try slow-roasting them.

And oh my god, I am so glad I did.

The result was amazing: chewy, sweet, and slightly tart jewels of intense tomato flavored goodness. I posted the other day that I ate half of them right off the sheet but what I didn't tell you about is the incredible restraint it took not to eat them all.


Most of the blogs called for roma tomatoes because they tend to have much more meat than a regular slicing tomato. I don't grow romas, though, so I decided to bust that shit wide open and make them with what I had on hand - shocking! And yes, I know it's hot out and I'm telling you to use your oven...sack up. It's a low oven and once you taste these, you won't care. I promise.

Slow Roasted Tomatoes

Tomatoes, lots of them. I used a mix of heirloom and hybrid slicers - you can use whatever you'd like, including roma and cherry.

Olive oil

Kosher salt (please do not use table salt. Not now, not ever)

Freshly ground black pepper

Herbs - I used thyme because I love it and grow a lot of it and dried oregano because I prefer dried oregano over fresh. YMMV, use whatever herbs make you excited, okay?

Preheat oven to 225. Slice tomatoes. If using small roma or cherry tomatoes, slice them in half stem to stem. If using larger tomatoes, you can half them stem to stem, then cut them into quarters. Or you can slice them along the equator. It really doesn't matter because this recipe is from Jesus and therefore very forgiving. And don't worry about the skin - it's part of what makes these so freaking delicious. Arrange them on a cookie sheet, cut side up. Drizzle with olive oil - don't go crazy, but don't be frugal, either. Tomatoes contain a lot of sugar and if there isn't enough oil, you're going to have a stuck-on mess and then you'll hate me and probably curse the day I was born and really? That's not okay.

Sprinkle with herbs/seasonings of your choice. You can also throw some garlic on there, either finely sliced or whole, unpeeled cloves to squeeze out on some bread later (oh god, I just drooled). Bake them on the lower rack of the oven for...well, that depends upon your tomatoes. Mine took about 5 hours. Bake them until they're shriveled but are still retaining a little juice. You may want to turn them over halfway through; I did, but I'm not sure it's necessary.

You can store these in the fridge, covered with olive oil, or apparently you can also freeze them. I'm not sure they'll last that long, though.

Here's what I ended up actually putting away, mostly because I'm a glutton.



About an hour or two into cooking, mine looked like this:



So you can see that it really is a slow process. I can't repeat enough, though: It is so. worth. it.

I'd originally intended to use them for a pasta sauce but then I realized I was hungry and that these would be so, so delicious on some toast with cream cheese. I toasted some of Trader Joe's flourless 7-grain bread, smeared it with cream cheese and holy jesus on a plate, people. Screw using these for pasta, man.



So. Delicious.

I happened to have some leftover grated zucchini (from the zucchini/pineapple bread), so I decided to saute that up with some green onions - sort of like a hash brown, but with zucchini instead. The result was one of the best lunches I've had in a long time - most likely enhanced by the fact that I grew this stuff.