Uncomplicate.

After my late start this spring I’m still just in the dreaming-of-the-future stage with this year’s tomato harvest. They’re coming along nicely but it will be a while before I get that magical taste of late-summer I look forward to the rest of the year.

As I mentioned before, my old gardening habits from my small, shady city backyard don’t exactly fly here in my sunny country garden. In my old garden, I pretty much only ever had enough tomatoes to eat the day I harvested them. An already short season here in the Pacific Northwest is even shorter in the partial shade, so I had given up on growing larger varieties and focused on cherry and grape tomatoes that I could pop in my mouth and enjoy as they ripened, or throw in a fresh pasta dish that same evening.

Fast-forward to my first country garden: I planted as I always had before, and ended up with out of control cherry tomato vines with way more than we could eat fresh. I only grew 1 variety of larger tomatoes (gorgeous and tasty “Orange You Glad“) and had way more than we could eat of those, too. My answer to preserving much of this goodness was roasting and smoking them for sauce.

If you haven’t roasted tomatoes before you’re in for a treat. It’s been my go-to solution for years to use up those pale, flavorless off-season grocery store tomatoes (I’ve always called them “cardboard tomatoes”, you know the ones). Cut those icky old things up into chunks and stick them in the oven with a little olive oil, sprinkled with some salt, pepper, herbs and maybe a couple splashes of balsamic vinegar: you end up with sweet, caramelized tomatoey goodness.

Hit that with an immersion blender or throw it in the food processor and you’ve got a killer rich sauce for pasta, you don’t even need to peel the tomatoes first. Our favorite is to toss the puree with roasted spaghetti squash and top with generous amounts of Parmesan and cracked black pepper.

Roasting is awesome, but I’ve become even more obsessed the last couple years with smoking fruit in our little electric smoker, and tomatoes are excellent smoked. I like to use the smoked puree as an ingredient in soups and sauces more than a stand-alone sauce, as it can be pretty strong on its own.

Last summer I would roast and/or smoke a batch or two of tomatoes every few days and usually just freeze quart bags of them as I went. By September the kitchen counter was always full of tomatoes.

We ate a lot, I froze some, canned some, but mainly stuck with freezing the roasted sauce as I didn’t have an accurate feel for acidity (as in, canning safety) for each different roasted batch.

By the end of October we were overrun with green tomatoes that needed to be used right away.

I tried making some smoked green tomato salsa that wasn’t as exciting as I’d hoped (will be experimenting and tweaking that recipe this year and will keep you posted). The salsa was sort of meh on its own, but it and the roasted and smoked green puree has been an excellent addition to soups, chili, and other sauces this past year.

If you’ve got a little freezer space, or just want to try some roasted or smoked sauce now, it’s a simple way to enjoy your harvest, or even those icky cardboard grocery-store tomatoes if that’s what you’ve got!

Roasted or Smoked Tomato Sauce:

Scroll down for printable instructions/recipe!

Cut any variety/shape of tomato in medium/large fairly uniform size chunks (no need to peel them!). Size isn’t that important as long as they’re all around the same size so they cook up the same. I like to halve cherry tomatoes for this so they release the juices but it’s not necessary. Place in a single layer cut-side up in a deep baking sheet lined with parchment. The tomatoes may release quite a bit of liquid while cooking so it’s important to do this in a pan with edges so it doesn’t run all over your oven.

Toss a little olive oil, salt and pepper, and whatever herbs you prefer (I usually use basil and oregano, fresh from the garden or dried).

For roasted tomatoes: Roast in a 400 degree oven until their released juices get bubbly and caramelized and they just start to darken up. Depending on the size of your chunks and the moisture content, this is usually 20-50 minutes. Some tomatoes will appear very dry through this process, others get really juicy as they cook. These were all “eating tomatoes” rather than paste/sauce tomatoes but still the liquid content varied quite a bit.

For smoked tomatoes: I’ve only smoked tomatoes in a small electric smoker so I suggest you use the basic guidelines in your smoker’s manual (or previous smoking experience!) for the perfect smoked tomatoes. I prepare the tomatoes the same as for roasting and use a small pie pan or piece of foil lined with parchment to contain the released juices.

             

I’ve used alder and mesquite chips for tomatoes but still can’t decide which we like best! I’ve had the best success smoking them at a medium-high temperature (275-300) until they bubble and caramelize a bit. This won’t happen as dramatically as higher-heat roasting and a little more juice will still be present when they’re cooked.

If you’re going to eat the sauce right away, transfer the warm tomatoes to a heatproof bowl and puree with an immersion blender, or place in a food processor and pulse until smooth. Toss with your favorite pasta and top with cheese for a simple and delicious dinner.

If you’ll be saving the sauce for later, it’s all much easier to handle if you let the roasted tomatoes cool before pureeing/processing. Refrigerate the pureed sauce for up to a week, or after it’s completely cool you can fill freezer bags to enjoy the flavors of summer the rest of the year.