Slow-Roasted Cherry Tomatoes
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Slow-roasted cherry tomatoes are intensely sweet and tangy. Add them to salads, pastas, pizza and more.
Last week, a gift arrived at my front door: a huge basket of sweet, homegrown cherry tomatoes from my neighbor Matt’s garden. Inspired by Ina Garten’s Roasted Tomato Caprese Salad, in which she roasts halved plum tomatoes in a vinaigrette mixture to concentrate their flavor, I decided to slow-roast them. Doused in a mixture of olive oil, balsamic vinegar and garlic, and cooked in a low-temperature oven for 2 hours, cherry tomatoes take on an intense, almost sun-dried tomato flavor while retaining their juicy texture. They taste like tomato candy! What’s more, they burst when you cut into them, creating a flavorful sauce for whatever you serve them with.
Roasted cherry tomatoes can be enjoyed in a variety of ways, such as:
- As a side dish with grilled fish or meat
- With burrata cheese
- As a pizza topping
- Over pasta or risotto
- As a bruschetta or cracker topping with burrata, ricotta, or goat cheese
- As an omelette filling
- As a crepe filling
- Over avocado toast
- Puréed and strained to make roasted tomato soup (good hot or cold)
What You’ll Need To Make Slow-Roasted Cherry Tomatoes
- 2 lbs (3 pints) cherry tomatoes
- ¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
- 1½ tablespoons balsamic vinegar
- 2 teaspoons sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
Step-by-Step Instructions
Preheat the oven to 275°F and set an oven rack in the middle position. Line a baking sheet with wide heavy-duty aluminum foil.
Put the tomatoes on the lined baking sheet and add the tomatoes with the olive oil, vinegar, sugar, salt, pepper, and garlic.
Using a rubber spatula, toss the tomatoes with the remaining ingredients.
Roast for 2 hours, until the tomatoes are soft and beginning to burst.
Serve hot or at room temperature. The tomatoes will keep in a covered container in the refrigerator for 4-5 days.
How To Freeze Roasted Cherry Tomatoes
Roasted tomatoes can also be frozen for up to 3 months. It’s a good idea to divide them into individual portions to thaw as needed to add to pizza, pasta, omelets, crepes, etc.
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Roasted Cherry Tomatoes
Slow-roasted cherry tomatoes are intensely sweet and tangy. Add them to salads, pastas, pizza and more.
Ingredients
- 2 lbs (3 pints) cherry tomatoes
- ¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
- 1½ tablespoons balsamic vinegar
- 2 teaspoons sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 275°F and set an oven rack in the middle position. Line a baking sheet with wide heavy-duty aluminum foil.
- Directly on the lined baking sheet, using a rubber spatula, toss the tomatoes with the olive oil, vinegar, sugar, salt, pepper, and garlic. Roast for 2 hours, until the tomatoes are soft and beginning to burst. Serve hot or at room temperature.
- Make-Ahead/Freezer-Friendly Instructions: The tomatoes will keep in a covered container in the refrigerator for 4-5 days. They can also be frozen for up to 3 months. If freezing them, it's a good idea to divide them into individual portions to thaw as needed.
Nutrition Information
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- Per serving (6 servings)
- Serving size: about 1 cup
- Calories: 117
- Fat: 9 g
- Saturated fat: 1 g
- Carbohydrates: 8 g
- Sugar: 6 g
- Fiber: 2 g
- Protein: 1 g
- Sodium: 388 mg
- Cholesterol: 0 mg
This website is written and produced for informational purposes only. I am not a certified nutritionist and the nutritional data on this site has not been evaluated or approved by a nutritionist or the Food and Drug Administration. Nutritional information is offered as a courtesy and should not be construed as a guarantee. The data is calculated through an online nutritional calculator, Edamam.com. Although I do my best to provide accurate nutritional information, these figures should be considered estimates only. Varying factors such as product types or brands purchased, natural fluctuations in fresh produce, and the way ingredients are processed change the effective nutritional information in any given recipe. Furthermore, different online calculators provide different results depending on their own nutrition fact sources and algorithms. To obtain the most accurate nutritional information in a given recipe, you should calculate the nutritional information with the actual ingredients used in your recipe, using your preferred nutrition calculator.
Gluten-Free Adaptable Note
To the best of my knowledge, all of the ingredients used in this recipe are gluten-free or widely available in gluten-free versions. There is hidden gluten in many foods; if you're following a gluten-free diet or cooking for someone with gluten allergies, always read the labels of your ingredients to verify that they are gluten-free.
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So yum thank you! Easy too, just the slow oven time to plan. Will make this again
Hello I have an event coming up but and a current sale. Will freezing it change the texture and wholeness of the tomatoes.?
Hi Susan, It’s fine to freeze these. See the bottom of the recipe for freezer-friendly instructions. 🙂
We LOVE these! I thought we would, so made a double recipe, which we enjoyed on toast and on omelettes, and then froze the remainder in separate containers. Tonight we thawed a carton and loved the tomatoes spooned over ravioli.
Jenn, I’m so grateful that you almost always tell us how to store recipes, and which can be frozen, etc. So many recipes don’t include that VERY useful information (which is especially helpful for small families or singles.)
Love this recipe, I’ve done it almost three times now and always a hit!!
Thank you so much, your recipes are clear and so easy to follow.
My garden is bursting with tomatoes so this was a great way to use lots of them in the most delicious way! We LOVED how the slow roasting intensified the flavor of the tomatoes. I served them over pasta and and can’t wait to have leftovers to top my avocado toast. Five stars plus!!!
I was surprised by this recipe as I usually like everything I’ve tried from your website! Too much sugar, too much salt!
Oh, my goodness! I made a batch of this, tossed chunks of goat cheese over the top, and packed it all up for our picnic before Shakespeare in the Park.
Spread over fresh bread, it was crazy delicious! And flavor bang for the buck was outstanding, so this will be in the rotation for as long as summer tomatoes are here. Will probably be trying burrata as suggested as well, but even the plain old Trader Joes log of goat cheese was sublime with this.
Sidenote: Desired done-ness ended up taking 2 hrs plus another 15 minutes in my oven.
Hi Jen,
I would have a question re the oven temperature: if I switch to “metric”, it says “135 F”, the option cup measures gives me 275 F. What would be the correct temp.? Thank you so much!
P.S.: LOVE all your recipes and spread the news in Hamburg, Germany :))
Hi Christine, I’m sorry, that was a data entry error. The celsius temp you want is 135. I inadvertently put an F in there. 🙂
And thanks so much for spreading the word about the blog!
Quite simply AMAZING! At first, I was skeptical about this amount of tomatoes…..quite a bit! But, trusting Jenn, I followed her recipe. Serve them on a chicken breast….delish. The next night, still having tomatoes, served them over salmon. OMG…..the flavors of the tomatoes were so intense and incredible. My husband and I looked at each other and said “dinner party”! Thank you Jenn!!!!!!
Hi Jen.
I love your recipes!! Just was wondering if you think I could use grape tomatoes rather than cherry. We have an abundance of these this year!
Hi Sharon, Grape tomatoes will definitely work. Enjoy! 😊
I used grape tomatoes twice and they definitely work just fine.
I made the recipe from fresh tomatoes from my garden.
Our friends gave us a LOT of tomatoes from their garden and this recipe hit the mark. I mixed them with pasta, baby mozzarella cheese pesto. So delicious!
Made this yesterday and HOLY SMOKES it was great. Would absolutely make again. Served over orzo with some chicken and a green veggie. Perfect and so easy.
I made this last weekend with the dark balsamic vinegar. It was so delicious. Ratios were perfect, as I adjusted the recipe for the quantity of tomatoes used.
I think next time I’ll try my white balsamic vinegar.
Your recipes are always a hit!
Has anyone tried freezing the leftovers? We usually have a huge haul of tomatoes and I’m always looking for new things to do with them. Thanks!
Hi, you can freeze the leftovers for up to 3 months. (See the bottom of the recipe for freezer-friendly instructions.)
Hi there! Any recommendations on other vinegar we could use? I’m sure balsamic is the best, but I wondered if red wine vinegar could work in a pinch. Thanks!
Yep red wine vinegar will work 🙂
How timely this recipe was! My husband had just harvested a slew of grape tomatoes, and I was trying to figure out what I could do with them when your email arrived. I followed the recipe, adjusting amounts since I only had about a pound and a half, and they took the full two hours in my oven. They are so good – super concentrated tomato flavor! We had some last night on personal naan bread pizzas, and I’m already looking forward to adding them to other dishes as well. Great recipe!
This is just delicious! I made the tomatoes and served with fresh burrata cheese and garlic bread. Thanks so much for this !
I made this today and it smelled soooo good in the oven! I toasted a piece of baguette and spread the tomato ‘gold’ over – it was absolutely deeelish! I’ve stripped my tomato plant and will be making more tomorrow! Try this recipe, you will LOVE it!
Made this today and we’re still snacking on them. Tomorrow a double batch with fresh burrata, basil, olive oil and some balsamic glaze. All of your recipes that we have tried have been fantastic. Thanks Jenn.
Hi, this looks delicious and I definitely have to try the recipe but I need to buy pans I know you recommended a brand a few weeks ago but was in process of moving. Now that I’m here in the new house a whole week can’t remember the brand name. American maybe?
Hi Karen, I use USA Bakeware. You can see my recommendations here.
It looks really good, and I definitely want to try this recipe. Do I really need to add that much sugar though? I may substitute a little maple syrup. (You guessed it, I am in Canada 😊)
Hi Anne, You can omit or cut back on the sugar; maple syrup would also work beautifully.
This looks wonderful! Question: Will this recipe work with grape tomatoes? They’re much more common in the supermarket (I don’t have a source for garden-fresh cherry tomatoes), but grape tomatoes are a little smaller, so I’m guessing they might need to roast for a shorter time. What do you think?
They will definitely work and the cook time will be about the same, maybe just a bit shorter. Please LMK how they turn out!