Roasted Tomato Puree

This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays hosted this week by Kelly the Kitchen Kop. Check out all the other Real Food links! And now on to the post…

Tomato Gardening

Gardening popularity is increasing. And many folks are growing tomatoes. After all, tomatoes are relatively simple to grow and they provide a product only available to the home gardener.

This year, we’ve tried a number of varieties we received from the nice folks at WinterSown.org. Those tomato varieties include:

• Stupice
• Homestead
• Brandywine
• Tennessee Surprise
• Cherokee Purple
• Amish Paste

and a few others I did not keep very good track of when planting.

What to do with Surplus Tomatoes

As usual, the tomato harvest starts as a trickle. We ravenously gobble each and every fruit as they ripen.

But eventually, you end up with more than you can eat at one time. Then you start making salsa, fresh tomato sauce, perhaps even drying a few. But what do you do if you have a few dozen tomatoes and your fridge is already full of these delicious tomato dishes?

You make Roasted Tomato Puree, of course!

How to make Roasted Tomato Puree

I read about making Roasted Tomato Puree in an old hand-me-down issue of Organic Gardening Magazine years ago. Every summer, we enjoy the fruits of the relatively simple sauce.

Here are some simple instructions for making your own Roasted Tomato Puree:

First, select your tomatoes, wash & dry them (if you don’t dry them, the oil won’t stick in the next step).

Second, core them and cut out any bad spots.

Tomatoes for Roasting

Third, drizzle a bit of olive oil (or other healthy fat) on your tomatoes and sprinkle with salt & pepper. Toss them around a bit with your hands to coat the tomatoes with the olive oil.

Tomatoes Ready for Roasting

Fourth, spread your tomatoes in a pan and place them in the oven at 350 degrees.

Your time in the oven may vary depending on how roasted you want your tomatoes. Usually an hour will do.  But don’t be shy about leaving the tomatoes to roast longer. You want the skins to look brown to black. The Roasted Tomatoes in the picture below probably could have used another 20 minutes or so. But the kids we hungry and so…

Roasted Tomatoes Fresh from the Oven (and soon to be Pizza Sauce!)

Finally, run your Roasted Tomatoes through a food mill to remove the skin & seeds. You now have your own homemade Roasted Tomato Puree.

How do you use Roasted Tomato Puree?

Simple: any way you like!

It is a great base for any tomato sauce. Or add it to soups. You can even freeze it for a tasty Winter-time tomato treat. You might can your Roasted Tomato Puree it if you like but I find that I cannot roast enough tomatoes at one time to make it worth the bother.

Tell me what are you going to do with your Roasted Tomato Puree?

August 5th, 2009