Whew! We had a bumper crop of tomatoes this year! I don’t know what I expected by planting 24 plants in a garden bed full of rotten manure, but the results were stunning. They were nearly 6 feet tall and thank goodness 6 of them didn’t make it. I definitely had to get creative in ways to use them. One of my favorites was oven roasting the Romas. I also roasted the smaller tomatoes from my other plants, and they roasted fine too. I slow roasted mine for added flavor. They are very easy to roast, and I swear are better than candy when they are warm out of the oven! They freeze well, too. You can use them on pizza, in sandwiches, on toast, with eggs, etc. In the attached photo, I used them on a zero carb wrap with melted mozzarella, home made pesto, and chopped venison sausage. A flavor explosion!!!!!
EASY OVEN ROASTED ROMA TOMATOES
INGREDIENTS
- Roma tomatoes
- garlic, crushed
- seasoning of your choice—I used Lawry’s Salt and Mrs. Dash. Italian seasoning would be good, too, and how about a touch of cayenne pepper?
- olive oil
DIRECTIONS
- Wash and dry the Roma tomatoes. Then, cut the tomatoes in half lengthwise.
- Tightly place the tomatoes face up on a sheet pan with parchment paper.
- Add the garlic to some olive oil and spoon a little oil with garlic in it on each tomato half. Then sprinkle your choice of seasoning over the top.
- You will have to play with the roasting part a bit. The first batch I roasted at 250 degrees for 6 hours, but I didn’t think they were quite done, so the next batch I roasted at 275 degrees. I rushed that batch by turning up the oven to 300 degrees at the end because it was getting late (I did both batches in one day). They turned out fine so there is a lot of room for forgiveness. Everyone’s oven works a little differently, so look for the tomatoes to shrink by half to two thirds and still be slightly juicy. Rotate the pans every 2 hours, but don’t flip the tomatoes. ENJOY!!!
