Why would you ever confit cherry tomatoes? Trying so will only convince you! You will have delicious cherry tomatoes to use in pasta dishes, eat them on their own or even put them in a blender and make them a sauce, which opens more choices of how to use them. I do them every 3 weeks or so, reserve them in their oil for almost 2 weeks and always have a handy, useful and refined ingredient for a last-minute dish! You can also save the savory and aromatic oil, after straining it, and use it for sautéing anything that needs a bit of boost!
Cherry Tomatoes Confit
Ingredients
- 1.5 kgs ripened Cherry Tomatoes
- EVOO , (Extra Virgin Olive Oil), enough to cover by 2/3 the tomatoes
- 1 head Garlic , cut in half
- 5 sprigs fresh Rosemary , home grown
- 1 bunch fresh Thyme , home grown
- Sea Salt
- freshly ground Black Pepper
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 125 degrees C, air circulation, rack in the middle.
- In a large rectangular non-stick oven dish add the tomatoes, garlic, rosemary and thyme, add the oil to cover 2/3 of the tomatoes, and season with salt and pepper, and add in the oven.
- Every 30-40 minutes take out the dish from the oven and gently move the tomatoes.
- After 3 hours take the dish out of the oven and let cool for about 1 hour. After that discard the springs and garlic and gently pick with spoon the tomatoes one by one and place on the coarse mesh strainer inside a bowl.
- The oil gathered from the strainer needs to go again through a fine mesh this time.
- Once all the oil was strained either use the tomatoes as you like otherwise place them in a sterilized airtight glass jar or plastic container and cover them with the oil. Any remaining oil can be used for other cooking purposes.
