DesiGrub

Usually tomato vendors in any local farmers market sell slightly damaged organic tomatoes at a huge discount. Most of these tomatoes have small bruises due to transportation. I love getting these tomatoes for my sauce or to use as a base ingredient in my future dishes. Since I can’t store them fresh, I oven-roast them in a big batch and get my own roasted tomatoes.

Before I dive into how to roast tomatoes, I want to thank my cousin R’pa for her suggestions. I was searching information on how to roast tomatoes in an oven but couldn’t find any that I liked. So, naturally, I called someone who I thought would know.

Wash tomatoes. Cut into half. Lay tomatoes face down for proper browning and caramelization of tomato skin.

Broil at 500 ˚F (260 C) for 15 minutes in order to caramelize the skin.

Lower 45 minutes at 375 ˚F (190 ˚C) for to roast the tomato. This is also a good time to add peeled cloves of garlic or cut onions to flavor your roasted tomatoes. These roasted tomatoes can be used to make sauce or ingredients for future dishes.

I often blend these roasted tomatoes for future sauce or cooking base.

I would recommend the following steps only if you are directly using tomatoes as a sauce in a tomato-rich dish.  Further bake the tomatoes in 300 ˚F (150 ˚C) for 2 hours to get well cooked roasted tomatoes with a slightly stronger flavor. This is due to more slow-cooking of tomatoes and evaporation of water. The flavor is somewhat similar to wet sundried tomatoes.  This can be directly blended and served as a sauce with your favorite seasoning.

Storing roasted tomatoes. You can store tomatoes in old pasta jars. Make sure to sterilize them by heating the jar at 250 °F (121 ˚C) for 15 minutes.  Make sure to cool the jars before pouring the sauce. Store the sauce in refrigerator.

Roasting and storing your own tomatoes gives convenience of canned tomatoes with custom-made flavors but without any chemicals. Organic doesn’t mean it’s free from processed chemicals. Have a happy chemical free eating!