Since I posted about squirrels eating all my tomatoes, we haven’t had any more squirrel problems.

I can’t believe I wasted so much worrying about how to get rid of squirrels when all I had to do was threaten them on the Internet.

Now, at the end of the season, we’re finally harvesting tomatoes. Our sucker plants are even producing. Now that I have a windowsill full of red tomatoes, I can finally make my all-time favorite tomato recipe: oven-roasted tomatoes.

This is the third recipe in my Garden Recipe series. You can find the first here, and the second here. 

I first got the idea to make oven-roasted tomatoes from Barbara Kingsolver, she mentions them in her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Kingsolver doesn’t include her recipe for oven-roasted tomatoes in the book, so I started looking around for a good recipe. This isn’t an original recipe, but I’m not sure where it came from, but there are tons like it on the world wide web.

Start with a bunch of tomatoes. The more the better. You can use any size tomatoes: cherry, roma, etc. This time I used cherry, we get a handfull of cherry tomatoes from our garden almost every day.

Slice the tomatoes and drizzle them with olive oil, then sprinkle them with Kosher salt and pepper. Toss to coat.

You could probably mix them in a bowl, but if you did that then you wouldn’t get olive oil all over the counter. If you don’t make a big mess when you cook, your family won’t appreciate all of your hard work in the kitchen. And, babe, since I cooked do you mind cleaning?

Arrange the tomatoes skin-side down (if you use a different size tomato, slice them so they can be arranged skin-side down. Using this method, don’t cut big, hamburger-style slices. However, Ina Garten makes it happen.)

Peel and dice up some garlic and sprinkle it over the tomatoes. You can also throw some whole, un-peeled cloves in the pan. I would have done that, but I was running low on garlic.

Now throw them in the oven at 350 degrees for up to three hours. Don’t bother checking on the tomatoes, they’ll be fine.

And here’s the final product, a pan of delicious, perfectly roasted tomatoes.

Go ahead…pin it. You know you want to.

This made me ill. All those delicious tomatoes, garlic, and time with the oven on…wasted.

They weren’t all lost, but most of them were. Usually the sorta-charred ones are still good, but these were beyond charred.

I did this again with cherry tomatoes, and they were done in about an hour. In the past I’ve used Roma tomatoes, which definitely need more time. Check your tomatoes or wreck your tomatoes.

Oven-Roasted Tomatoes

Ingredients
A bunch of tomatoes, sliced or quartered (the tomatoes should be uniform in size)
Olive oil
Kosher salt
freshly ground pepper
garlic cloves

Directions
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
Drizzle tomatoes with just enough olive oil to coat everything. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Arrange tomatoes in a single layer,  skin side down, on a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil.
Peel and chop garlic and sprinkle evenly over the tomatoes. You can also roast entire, unpeeled, garlic cloves.
Bake 2 1/2 – 3 hours, checking tomatoes periodically. Juices will dry up and blacken.
Eat alone, tossed in pasta, or puree tomatoes and garlic to use as a spread.

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