Preserving Summer's Last Bounty of Tomatoes
How do you preserve the great taste of ripe summer homegrown tomatoes?
Earlier this week, my housekeepers, Enma and Sanu, picked the last of the season's cherry tomatoes. We had trays and trays of colorful and delicious fruits! I decided to roast them and store them in airtight containers in the freezer - it's an easy way to preserve warm-weather produce, so it can be enjoyed year-round. And preparing cherry tomatoes for roasting is so easy to do - just clean them, drizzle them with olive oil, add salt, pepper, and my "secret" ingredient, and then let them cook in the oven at low heat for several hours.
Enjoy these photos of the process. Be sure to scroll through every image, so you don't miss my helpful tip for using Pyrex bowls and the delicious turkey sandwiches I made using my QVC boneless turkey breast. If you didn't order my special holiday meal, just click on the highlighted link to the QVC web site.
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- Such a beautiful bounty of tomatoes. We separated them according to color and put them on large stainless steel trays – red, orange, yellow and green.
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- I ran the trays under cold water to clean them.
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- Sanu removed all the stems and placed them back on the towel covered trays to dry.
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- I just love how they look in the morning sunlight.
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- This is a closer look at the tomatoes – all washed and free of stems. Do you know… according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, most Americans eat between 22 and 24 pounds of tomatoes per person, per year? This amount includes tomatoes in sauces – that’s a lot of tomatoes!
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- Here are my gorgeous Chow Chows nearby – GK is resting, while Empress Qin and Peluche watch the activity outside the kitchen door.
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- Once the tomatoes are all cleaned and dried, they are ready to season.
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- These are the olive oils I used – you don’t need a lot, so feel free to use up any leftover bottles.
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- And, do you know how to be sure your olive oil is still good to use? Remove the top, cover the open end securely with one hand, gently swirl the bottle and turn it over.
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- You will have a small amount of olive oil in the palm of your hand. Take a sniff – fresh olive oil has a pungent, fruity smell, while rancid olive oil has little smell at all. And then taste it – rancid oil has a bitter taste with no fruitiness and may feel greasy.
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- All the olive oil is still good. Here I am drizzling it over these first trays of tomatoes. On this tray, I am using chili olive oil – it will give these tomatoes a little kick.
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- Here are more trays of tomatoes, with more olive oil drizzled on top.
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- Next, sprinkle them with salt and pepper.
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- Here is a closer look at one tray after the salt and pepper were added.
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- And then sprinkle them with a little sugar. I used less than a half-cup for all the trays, so they don’t need much sugar at all.
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- And that’s it – the tomatoes are all ready for roasting.
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- I placed the trays in a convection oven at 225-degrees Fahrenheit. If using a conventional oven, it would be 250-degrees Fahrenheit. Foods cooked in a convection oven cook about 25-percent faster than a conventional oven as the hot air is forced around the food. Foods tend to have less moisture loss and fewer nutrients are destroyed in the cooking process.
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- And here is another tip – if you need more oven space, place two oven safe Pyrex bowls upside down in the center of the two trays, so you can rest another tray of tomatoes on top.
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- Here is Empress Qin looking beautiful and ever hopeful for something to fall from the counter.
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- These tomatoes will roast for about four hours. Half way through, I checked on them and turned them on the tray.
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- Once they are all done, let them cool and then place them in plastic containers for freezing – they will be ready to enjoy in pasta or in a sandwich any time the craving hits.
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- For a quick lunch, I added some roasted tomatoes in turkey sandwiches. The turkey is my boneless turkey breast that I sold on QVC this week. Did you order your special turkey and sides? goo.gl/ZUQknS
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