Savory, sweet, oven roasted cherry tomatoes with olive oil and plenty of basil are delicious over pasta, served bruschetta-style on toast, or tossed into a salad. They're also lovely for snacking, straight from the jar!
This recipe for roasted cherry tomatoes was inspired by an $8 jar of roasted tomatoes that I just can't afford to buy on a regular basis.
My kid loved just snacking on those suckers, but at that price point I couldn't really justify them as a pantry staple. Instead, I picked up two pints of grape tomatoes for $6 and made my own roasted tomatoes.
Since recipe yields way more than the 1/2 cup of tomatoes that was in the $8 jar, these oven roasted tomatoes are a bargain!
The ingredients
You only need five simple ingredients to make this recipe:
- cherry tomatoes
- fresh basil
- garlic
- olive oil
- balsamic vinegar (Rice vinegar or lemon juice would also work well.)
If you can't find cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes would work just as well. For grape tomatoes, you'll just back off on the cooking time by five to 10 minutes.
The method
My favorite part about this recipe -- besides how addictive it is -- is how little prep you have to do. Because you're using small tomatoes, you roast them up whole. The only chopping you do is the basil and a few cloves of garlic.
To cut up the basil, I like to chiffonade them. This is a fancy term for "roll them up, then slice them". It's an efficient way to get perfect strips of flavorful basil.
For the garlic, I definitely recommend investing in a garlic press. Mincing garlic by hand is fine, but a press saves so much time! The prep time in the recipe below assumes that you are using a press.
After you prep the basil and garlic, you just toss everything together in a baking pan. Then, stick it into the oven to bake. That's it!
How to serve and store roasted tomatoes
When you pull these out of the oven, they're ready to eat! You have lots of delicious options for how to serve these up:
- Toss them with pasta and beans for a lazy supper.
- Serve them warm or cold over a salad.
- Stir them into rice for an instantly-fancy side dish.
- Spoon them onto slices of crusty bread for quick bruschetta.
- Snack on them, cold, straight from the jar!
Store any leftover tomatoes in an airtight container. They'll keep for three to five days in the refrigerator.
Oven roasted cherry tomatoes
Ingredients
- 2 pints cherry tomatoes
- 1/2 cup fresh basil - minced
- 4 cloves garlic - minced
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar - see note
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400F.
- Toss all of your ingredients together in a 9x12" baking pan. Bake for 30-40 minutes, depending on the size of your tomatoes. Smaller tomatoes will need less time to cook. Your tomatoes are ready when most of the ones in the pan have split open.
Notes
- Can't find cherry tomatoes? Grape tomatoes will also work in this recipe. They'll take a bit less time to cook -- more like 20-30 minutes -- since they're smaller, but otherwise you don't need to make any changes.
- You can use rice vinegar or fresh lemon juice, if you don't have balsamic vinegar.
Hannah
These look really wonderful! It blows my mind that Darrol Henry loved snacking on roasted tomatoes. Like, I'm a vegan grown up, and I still think I would need them in something. He's awesome!
Becky Striepe
Aw thank you! He is a kid with his mom's tastes in a lot of ways.