Roasted Tomato Sauce with Cherry Tomatoes
on Jul 16, 2024
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This roasted tomato sauce is a homemade sauce recipe without all the prep work. As much as I love a kitchen project, I’m not always in the mood to peel tomatoes, but I don’t want that to be the reason not to make my own sauce. Here I use cherry tomatoes and roast them with onions and garlic. Then I puree them, tomato skins, seeds and all. Roasting gives tomatoes a boost, intensifying their already special flavor. You can use this sauce for pasta, pizza and more.
For a traditional sauce made with fresh tomatoes, try this roma tomato sauce recipe.
Table of Contents
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
You don’t have to peel the tomatoes. Sometimes during the height of tomato season, you want to whip up a batch of homemade sauce without all the effort. For this recipe, you can roast whole fresh tomatoes, and there’s no need to peel them or even cut them.
This is a roasted cherry tomato sauce. If I had to pick a favorite tomato, cherry tomatoes would be it. They are versatile and have incredible flavor especially when you roast them in the oven.
There are lots of ways to use this homemade sauce. Pasta might the most obvious with pizza coming in a close second. They are both a starting point. Use this sauce in baked egg dishes like shakshuka. You can even turn it into tomato soup.
Tomato sauce is freezer-friendly. It freezes so well that once you thaw and reheat it, the sauce will taste just as excellent as when you originally made it.
The Ingredients
This is what you need:
- Cherry tomatoes: These juicy tomatoes are perfect for roasting. They can be any color. It doesn’t matter for taste. Just keep in mind that if you want a more red looking sauce, use all red tomatoes instead of a mix with orange and yellow.
- Onions: You can use a white, yellow or red onion depending what you have in your kitchen.
- Garlic: As the garlic cloves roast, they infuse the oil and tomatoes. The easiest way to peel them is to put a clove under the flat side of your chef’s knife and smack it down with your hand. The garlic will split and so will the skins, making them easy to slip right off.
- Olive oil: For the best taste, use high quality extra virgin olive oil.
- Red pepper flakes, kosher salt and black pepper season the sauce. I like to keep it all about the tomatoes, but if you want, you can add 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of an Italian seasoning mix. They typically have dried oregano, basil, rosemary, thyme and other spices.
How To Make This Roasted Tomato Sauce Recipe
1. Smash the garlic and peel it. Just use the flat side of a chef’s knife and give it a good whack. The garlic will squish a bit, and the papery skins will start to come off.
2. Combine the tomatoes, onions and garlic into a 13-inch by 9-inch baking pan.
3. Pour in the olive oil and season with red pepper flakes, salt and pepper. Stir everything together. The tomatoes and onions should fit tightly next to each other in the pan.
4. Roast the tomatoes. Give them 45-55 minutes to become wrinkled, juicy and fragrant.
5. Puree the roasted tomatoes, onions and garlic in a blender. Let them cool off for 10-15 minutes before you do this.
6. Simmer the sauce. This is an optional step. I like to thicken the sauce, so I simmer it in a pot for 10 minutes or so over low to medium heat, stirring frequently.
Serving
As mentioned, you can put this to use as pizza sauce or roasted tomato pasta sauce. Stir it with spaghetti or bucatini, or shorter shapes with ridges such as penne or rigatoni. Whether it’s pizza or a pasta dish, I add herbs like fresh basil to finish it along with a drizzle of olive oil.
For pizza, the toppings are up to you. Since the sauce is so wonderful, I like to give it a chance to shine. That’s why I keep it simple with a margarita pizza with tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese.
Leftovers, Storage & Freezing
Let the sauce cool to room temperature before you store it. You can keep it in an airtight container in the fridge up to 3 days. To store it up to 1 month, freeze it. I like to portion it out into individual serving sizes in freezer bags. Then you can thaw a smaller amount for a single meal rather than all of it.
Thaw frozen tomato sauce at room temperature or in the fridge. Then reheat it on the stove over low to medium heat or in microwave.
Recipe FAQs
For small tomatoes, go with cherry tomatoes because their flesh is more juicy and their skin is more delicate than grape tomatoes.
Roasting does enhance the flavor of tomatoes and brings out their natural sweetness. In season, ripe tomatoes are always best, but you can use less than perfect tomatoes.
This depends on the capacity of your food processor. You will likely need to do it in batches.
Yes. If you want to make this recipe into roasted tomato soup, simmer the pureed sauce with some veggie broth. You don’t want it to seem like you’re eating sauce, so that’s why I add broth to thin it out.
More Roasted Cherry Tomato Recipes
Sheet Pan Cherry Tomato Gnocchi
Cherry Tomato Confit
Balsamic Zucchini Tomato Bake
Slow-Roasted Cherry Tomatoes
Roasted Tomato Zucchini Orzo
Chickpea Greek Salad
Roasted Tomato Sauce with Cherry Tomatoes
Ingredients
- 3 pints cherry tomatoes
- 1 small onion, halved and cut into 1/4-inch thick slices
- 4 garlic cloves
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- Pinch of red pepper flakes
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
- Put a garlic clove underneath the flat side of a chef's knife. Carefully smack it with the heel of your hand to smash the garlic, and then peel off the skins. Repeat for all the garlic.
- Put the cherry tomatoes, onions and garlic into a 13-inch by 9-inch baking pan.
- Pour the olive oil into the pan and season with red pepper flakes, salt and pepper. Stir the tomatoes, onions and garlic, so they are coated in the oil. Arrange the tomatoes and onions, so they fit snuggly in the pan, mostly in a single layer.
- Bake the tomatoes until they have split and are wrinkled and very juicy, about 45-55 minutes.
- Give the tomatoes 10-15 minutes to cool.
- Carefully transfer everything from the pan to a blender to puree it to your desired consistency.
- Depending on how thick you want the sauce, simmer it in a large saucepan over low to medium heat, stirring frequently, for 10-12 minutes.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
