Every summer, I get a handful of questions about how I’m preserving the glut of local tomatoes that end up on my counter, so here’s the process I use. I love oven roasting as opposed to the more traditional water bath peeling for two reasons: no boiling pots of water steaming up my kitchen, & roasting concentrates the juices a little, unlike the watery results from the traditional method. I do about 25 pounds of tomatoes in a session, & while it takes a few hours in total, there’s not much fussy attention that needs to be paid, so I can do other stuff while the tomatoes are roasting & cooling.
I get my tomatoes in bulk from our local produce vendor; I wait until we are well into the season, then put in a request for a case of seconds, usually coming in at about a dollar a pound. These vary in quality from barely scuffed to on the verge of liquefying, depending on the year & the recent weather. Judicious trimming & oven roasting makes the most of sub-par fruit, another reason I love it so much.
We snagged a small chest freezer a few years ago, so that’s how I store my finished tomatoes, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t pack these in mason jars & can them in a water bath in the traditional manner. (Ball has a good basic methodology, but TL;DR: hot pack, add extra acid, get all the air bubbles out, water process for freaking EVER.)
Oven Processed Tomatoes
Preheat oven to 400F, & have ready one or two rimmed baking sheets.
Fresh tomatoes, any size or variety (I find traditional, high acid reds work best – low acid yellows & black/purple varieties lose some of their charm when cooked)
Halve or quarter your tomatoes, depending on the size, cutting out any woody stem bits & funky spots, & arrange them cut side up on the baking sheet (no oil or parchment needed). Roast for 20-40 minutes, until the juices are flowing & the tomatoes are softened. You’re not looking for browning or complete collapse, just an overall slumping & relaxing.
Transfer your tomatoes to a large heatproof bowl/pot, big enough to hold the full amount of tomatoes you’re processing. Continue cutting & roasting tomatoes (no need to wash the sheet pans between batches).
As each batch you’ve transferred to the bowl cools enough to handle, use your fingers to slip off the skins – they’ll pull off nicely in one big piece if you’ve cooked your tomatoes long enough. Under ripe tomatoes might need a bit longer in the oven to peel nicely. By the time you’ve peeled one sheet pan of tomatoes, the next will probably be ready to come out of the oven. It’s a nice, low-key rhythm of cutting, roasting, cooling, peeling, & cutting some more.
When all your tomatoes are peeled, you can:
- Pack them into containers or freezer bags as they are, for big chunky tomatoes
- Crush them by hand for rustic crushed tomatoes
- Puree them with an immersion blender for finely crushed tomato sauce
- Or run them through a food mill/Squeez-O Strainer for a super fine puree with no seeds
My goal every summer is to process enough tomatoes that I don’t have to buy any canned for the entire year; sometimes I make it, sometimes I don’t, but it’s a nice challenge. I’m doing fifty pounds this year, so we’ll see how that holds up.
Happy roasting!