Roasting Like It's Hot

The last few weeks have had one very particular theme at our house:  tomatoes.  As our scales climb ever closer to the 300 pounds of produce mark I am finding more and more ways to preserve our harvest to use later next year.  The easiest most efficient way I have found so far is to roast them in the oven, four pans at a time.  Then I pour the whole pan into freezer bags and away we go.  Who's ready for a photo tour?

First, I washed our tomatoes, cut them in half and seeded them.  I used our melon baller for this.  In fact, I have never actually used it to ball melon, only to seed tomatoes and core strawberries.

After what seemed like forever, or at least 20 pounds of tomatoes I had four roasting pans that looked like this.  Sorry the light is off.  The kitchen lighting is weird.  That's just how it is.

I drizzled a little olive oil on top, threw in some chopped garlic and after about 3.5 hours in the oven at 275* I had four pans that looked like this:

By this time it was totally dark outside and there is no way to not stand in the light and cast a weird shadow.  But you can see how the tomatoes are shrunken, roasted, and starting to caramelize.  Next I labeled 4 freezer bags and poured each pan into one bag.

I push out the air and lay it flat to freeze.  Then when they are all nice and frozen I sit them up for easier storage.  

And that is how I have spent the last two Saturdays.  Anyone else sweating it out in the kitchen in preparation for summer harvest being over soon?