Roasted Tomatos?

Factual Questions
1

I’m having some friends over for a recipe party next week. They want to make a killer guacamole. Unfortunatlely, they don’t have a recipe, just a memory of having watched the table chef put a bunch of stuff together that tasted great (beers were involved).

One of the ingredients is “roasted tomatos”. We had a disgreement about what exactly are “roasted tomatos”. (Beer, again).

So they are going to show up at my house and want to roast tomatos.

How do we roast tomatos?

Disclaimer - beer was involved in making this post. THe makers of beer take no responsibility for spelling errors, grammatical mistakes or an obvious nswer.

2

Here is a recipe and some more recipes to use them in.

3

You could probably roast dried tomatoes. I don’t know about fresh ones though. They have a pretty high water content. When you saute tomatoes, they break down into thicker and thicker sauce.
Why don’t you try nuking one? JUST KIDDING!!! Shouldn’t say things like that to a beer influenced person.
Peace,
mangeorge

4

Tomatoes must be roasted over an open fame. The flame of a gas stove works nicely. Otherwise you’ll need a smalll propane torch which can be easily purchased at the hardware store, or, more expensively, a kitchen supply store.

To roast, hold the tomato over the flame until the skin blackens. Keep turning the tomato until all of the skin is charred.

Now, using your fingers or a paper towel, remove the blackened skin. Apparently there’s some debate about whether to do this under running water or not. Under running water is much, much easier. Don’t worry about getting every single tiny fleck of skin off, but you do want it to be mostly clean.

Now you have a roasted (and incidentally skinless) tomato.

5

I’ll have to try that. I have baked tomatoes in the oven, but they get very soft and mushy (a good thing, for sauce). I can’t imagine running water over them. Besides, the skin is yummy, and looks good in the sauce.
Sounds like it would be pretty good in guacamole, too.
Peace,
mangeorge

6

There shouldn’t be a debate: you’ve just spent all that time giving the tomato a yummy roassted flavor: if you wash the thing,you’ll wash off all the roasted flavor. Trust me: don’t wash it. And if a little bit of charred stuff is left-over, as Hello Again said, it’s no big deal.

One additional step that that I do is that after roasting but before peeling, put the hot tomatos in a paper bag. Close the top and let 'em cool for a few minutes before peeling. The steam makes the skin come off more easily, and you don’t burn your fingers.

Note that this method is also perfect for roasted peppers.

Fenris

7

No way! You don’t need gas for making great roasted tomatoes for salads or to go along with a main course. The Naked Chef (on Food TV) makes them all the time in the oven. I couldn’t find his recipe but Sarah Moulton of Cooking Live has a very similar one. Check it out:

From FoodTv.com :

8

or you could put them in the oven under broil.

or you can put them on a cast iron grill (or in a skillet) and watch them roast away. I also do this to my jalapenos for my salsa.

9

Ok, I tried the ‘open flame’ method. Well, to each his/her own I guess.
I agree with the others (Naked Chef, et al). Splitting and seeding them (the tomatoes, silly) yields much better flavor.
Thanks for the mess on my stove, BTW. :stuck_out_tongue:
Peace,
mangeorge

10

Well, we ended up using ZipperJJ’s method (or the guacamole cooks did). They said it made great tasting tomatos, so they put them in the salad, instead of the guacamole. I don’t know what they did for the tomatos in the guacamole - I was busy cooking shrimp poorboys and drinking beer.

But the guys all want to try the method that involves blowtorching tomatos. I figures we’ll wait until we have a windchill factor of less than -11F on the patio and I can warn the neighbors of flaming tomatos in their yard (Maybe they’d be easier to torch if they were coated in vodka first? Yeah.)

Doug