Roasted Tomatoes

End of summer, early fall is a great time for roasted tomatoes.   They make an easy, healthy and delicious way to make a pasta sauce.  They can also be made year round, although the flavor tends to be less spectacular.   If you are doing it outside of garden grown time, I recommend using only Roma tomatoes – they will have the best flavor available at your grocer.  Second after that are grape tomatoes – the little tiny ones.

Ingredients

Tomatoes – cut into pieces.  Half if grape tomatoes, quarters if Roma, eighths if larger tomatoes.  For a dryer, more roasted flavor, you need to seed and juice the tomatoes.  If you want a juicier sauce, don’t, but you will likely never get good carmalization.

Olive Oil

Seasoning (basil, Italian, oregano).  Dried works well.  If I have fresh, I usually add that to the final dish, not the roasting

Salt and Pepper

Sugar

Recipe

Turn oven to 450

Line baking sheet (jelly roll pan) with foil.  Use several pans if you need to – you want each tomato to not touch the others.  If there are too many to a pan, they will steam, not roast or caramelize.

All ingredients in pan(s).  I use 1tbs of oil and seasoning per 1lb of tomato, ½  tsp of salt, pepper and sugar for each 1lb of tomato.

Roast for 20-30 minutes, or desired doneness.  The more juice and seeds you remove from the tomatoes, the faster and better they will caramelize.  If you do not do this, it will take a long time for the liquid to evaporate and you may never get good carmalization.

These make a great pasta sauce – just toss into cooked pasta.  Or, eat them as a side dish, or as a dressing for fish or chicken.