Roasted Tomatoes... like gold!

Every late summer and early autumn you will find me doing the kitchen dance with a mess of tomatoes. Once the tomatoes come in here in Oregon it is a mad rush for me to process as many as I can before the first frost. I always, always, always roast many-a-tomato for sauce and this year I added this Carrot-Tomato soup to my "Must make during tomato season" list. (we now have about 8 batches of soup in our big freezer waiting for those rainy days when all that will soothe you is tomato soup and grilled cheese).

Each week I pick whatever tomatoes have turned in my backyard and I also buy anywhere from 10- 15 lbs from the little tomato lady at our farmers market (she has recently started bringing her chickens to the market too... who knew you could sell laying hens at the market!) AND, this year I was surprised to find a huge bucket of tomatoes (maybe 25 lbs) in the back seat of my car after school one day... it helps to share your love of roasting tomatoes with the computer teacher who loves to grow tomatoes!
When I am ready to roast I slice all the tomatoes into slices that are maybe 1 inch thick. I pour a nice amount of olive oil onto two baking sheets, lay the tomato slices in a single layer, and top with more olive oil. I then sprinkle salt, pepper, some oregano and sugar onto the tomatoes. And, into the oven they go, set at 300. Depending on how thick I have sliced them, I let them roast anywhere from 3- 4 hours... and wow will your house smell delightful!

When they are roasted to my liking, it really is an exact science, as you can see, I then put them through a food mill with the coarsest blade (a food processor would work, but I like that the food mill keeps the skins out of the sauce). After the tomatoes have gone through the mill I then let them cool on the counter and into my ball freezer containers they go! For sauce I always use the two cup size container (two cups is what you get in a can of sauce or a can of diced tomatoes).

I try to process enough tomatoes that we won't have to buy any tomato sauce throughout the year... we have never made it to another tomato season with roasted tomatoes still in the freezer. In the dark of winter, this sauce really is like golden sunshine! We tend to use it for all sorts of everything- in soups, casseroles, as pizza sauce, a sauce for polenta and of course good old pasta.

on the left you can see the soup, on the right is the sauce