So many Romas. Too many Romas! It can be overwhelming, all those beautiful Roma tomatoes coming in from the garden every day. It is so time-consuming, preparing the tomatoes and then standing over the stove making sauce, stirring and stirring. But then I learned something fantastic – if you roast the Romas and stash them in your freezer, it takes very little hands-on effort, and they takes up very little freezer space. Roasted Romas (for freezing) is the answer!
I learned to can tomatoes in quart jars from my Nan Nan. It was so satisfying, seeing those beautiful jars lined up in the pantry. But over time it became such a chore, especially when you can buy organic San Marzano tomatoes at the grocery store for so little money. Yet, I slogged on for a while. At some point, I stopped canning the tomatoes and began making sauce and freezing it in the canning jars. The jars lined up on the freezer door didn’t delight me the way the jars in the pantry had. They took up so much freezer space and it was still a lot of work.
Before I discovered Roasted Romas (for freezing), I would watch Ron walking toward the house and I could tell from the way he was walking that the colander was heavy with Roma tomatoes. I wanted him to turn around and dump the whole thing into the compost pile! I almost gave up – deciding for a bit that I wasn’t going to grow Romas in the future and just focus on growing our favorite heirloom and cherry tomatoes.
But this recipe for Roasted Romas (for freezing) has changed my mind. Yes, cleaning and chopping the tomatoes is laborious, and the roasting does take some time, but I spend most of that time across the room, sitting in my chair reading a book. Life is good!
Roasted Romas (for freezing)
Equipment
- 1 9 X 12 Pyrex baking dish
- 1 Quart-size Ziploc bag
Ingredients
- 5 pounds Roma tomatoes
- 6 cloves garlic
- olive oil
- salt and pepper
Instructions
- Preheat the oven and prep the tomatoes – Preheat your oven to 350º F. Wash, destem, and deseed the tomatoes. It's OK if you don't remove all of the seeds – no worries. Dice the cleaned tomatoes into 1/2 to 1 inch chunks.
- Add the tomatoes to your baking dish – Peel and smash the garlic cloves. Pour the tomatoes in to your baking dish. It's OK if they fill up the dish. just don't fill to the point where it's difficult to stir them. Scatter the smashed garlic cloves over the tomatoes. Add salt and pepper and a glug of olive oil, then stir it all together to ensure that every last tomato is coated with the oil.
- Roast – Roast for about 1 ½ to 2 hours, stirring every so often. If the edges of a few of the tomatoes get a little char, it's all good. That's flavor!
- Fill the Ziplock bag and freeze – Spoon the roasted tomatoes into the Ziploc bag Seal (pushing out as much air as you can), label the bag, and stash it in freezer.
Roma tomatoes are very similar to San Marzano tomatoes. Check out this article from Tasting Table if you’re interested in learning how they’re related. It’s wonderful having Roasted Romas available all year long – they’re great for not only making sauce. They’re also great for dumping into soups, stews, and curries, even making salsa in the dead of winter. They’re much better than anything that comes out of a can. Each quart bag, if you start with five pounds of tomatoes, will include fifteen ounces of Roasted Romas, roughly equal to the contents of a 14.5 ounce can of diced tomatoes, so you can sub in these tomatoes when following any recipe that calls for canned, diced tomatoes.