Oven-Roasted Tomatoes

Another one of the summer favorites in our house

A bunch of tomatoes
(I prefer Romas or Plum, but you can use another variety if you've got them. Grape tomatoes are also awesome)
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Kosher Salt
Fresh Cracked Pepper
a bunch of large garlic cloves
Dried thyme

Preheat oven to 325

Cut your tomatoes. If you're using small romas, just cut them in half. Anything larger, quarter them. Half Grape Tomatoes. Leave Garlic cloves in their skins. You'll want to use the largest cloves you have. 3 hours is a long time for garlic to roast, so if you use little cloves they'll dry right up. Larger cloves will leave you with yummy roasted garlic you can still use when you're done. Place everything in a large bowl. Drizzle with olive oil (enough to lightly coat everything- they don't need to swim) and sprinkle with salt and pepper and thyme. Lightly toss together, coating everything.

Arrange tomatoes in a single layer, skins down, on a cookie sheet lined with foil or parchment paper. Place garlic periodically around the pan.

Place in oven and cook for 2 1/2-3 hours, depending on the size of your tomatoes. It usually takes about 3 for romas that are halved. You'll want to just keep an eye on them after about 2 hours. Your house will smell like heaven. You'll see the juices have dried up and some of the tomatoes will start to get dark around the edges.

When they're done they'll look like this: kind of dried up, and blackened around the edges, but still soft. Eat one right away and see what I'm talking about. Amazing, right? I'm not joking. They're amazing.


The garlic is nice and toasty too. Some cloves will probably be a little crunchy, but if you use large enough cloves, you'll also get some that you can squeeze and get all that great roasted garlic goo from.