Easy Tomato Confit (+ 4 Delicious Ways to Use It)
A *tomato confit journey* in collaboration with our pals at Great Jones
Hi friends, hi tomatoes,
It’s here: peak summer bounty, the moment we’ve all be waiting for, pomodoro-palooza, tomato season.
There are few things that evoke a season more than a perfectly ripe tomato, and we wait all year for our first bite of this heavenly, vegetable-y fruit. But, after a few days of naked tomatoes with little more than a drizzle of olive oil and a pinch of salt, we start craving more creative ways to use the bounty—especially if we have an avowed raw tomato hater in our midst (we won’t name names). And since we’re the types to consider tomato season a sacred holiday, we’ve teamed up with our pals at Great Jones to help us celebrate with their colorful form-meets-function, tomato-friendly cookware. They’ve generously passed along a discount code for us to share with our readers, so that you can:
Enjoy 20% off all Great Jones products with the code GREENSPOON between Wednesday, July 24, and Sunday, July 28 (11:59pm PST). Offer excludes limited-edition products, custom Dutch ovens, engraving, gift cards, and Great Fellow.
This week we’re evangelizing a time-honored tomato-cooking method, a version of which became one of Fanny’s most viral recipes ever: the slow-cooked, tomato confit. Pack a roasting dish or pan with ripe tomatoes, garlic, and herbs, and pop it in the oven at a low temperature for a couple of hours. The result? Savory tomatoes whose sweetness has been concentrated into something approaching ambrosia. Confited tomatoes are, of course, tasty on their own, but we love to make a big batch to have on hand for a week of easy, delicious cooking and eating.
With that, we give you:
A basic recipe for Easy Tomato Confit
Tomato Confit Gazpacho with Cucumbers and Mint
Bucatini with Tomato Confit Sauce and Fresh Basil
Tomato Confit Caprese
Lentil Salad with Tomato Confit
Viva tomatoes,
Fanny + Greta
Above: A whole mix of sizes and colors of tomatoes with garlic, basil and fresh oregano in our very well-loved Great Jones' 12" cast iron skillet, The King Sear, and a finished batch of confited Early Girl tomatoes, all jammy and browned.
To confit, a primer:
To confit something means to cook it submerged in oil or fat, slowly and over a long period (historically, as a method of preservation). People often associate “confit” with things like duck legs or meat, but you can confit vegetables too! This recipe falls somewhere between a confit and a slow roast—the amount of oil neither covers the tomatoes entirely nor merely coats them. The flavor concentrates as it would if you simply slow roasted them, but something altogether more magical transpires when there’s enough oil to keep the moisture locked in for longer as they simmer away. See more in Fanny’s IG highlight that is entirely dedicated to the art (and worship) of tomato confit.
The Stats
Active time: 10 mins, passive time: 2–3 hours
Ingredients
Ripe tomatoes of any variety (the sweeter the better!)
Lots of garlic cloves
Fresh basil and/or marjoram or oregano
Olive oil (choose something that is not too pungent or bitter—a medium-bodied oil works best here)
The Method
Heat your oven to 300F
Clean and remove stems from the tomatoes. If your tomatoes are large, simply remove the stems, core them and place them whole and upside-down in your ovenproof dish.
Peel several cloves of garlic and nestle them in between the tomatoes.
Add some basil, marjoram, or oregano leaves, tucking them underneath and around the tomatoes (you can totally skip the herbs—it’ll still taste great).
Add a generous sprinkle of fine sea salt and *PLENTY* of good olive oil. Don’t drown them but make sure the oil comes at least ⅓–½ up the tomatoes.
Place in the center of your oven and forget about them for an hour.
After an hour, check on them to make sure all is going swimmingly. They shouldn’t be scorching or browning excessively, just bubbling away gently and beginning to collapse. Gently turn with a spoon.
After 2–3 hours they should be done: wrinkly, juicy, sweet, caramelized, concentrated and delicious. If they don’t taste like they’re quite there yet, return them to the oven and cook for longer to reduce more liquid.
Once cool, store with the liquid in an airtight glass container in the fridge. They’ll keep well for a week (if they last that long!)
Above: the olive oil decanter of dreams, the Spout (in ‘broccoli’) and a bowl of soup that’s been generously drizzled.
Few things are more refreshing on a hot summer day than an ice-cold bowl of gazpacho. Traditionally, gazpacho is made with fresh tomatoes, but we love the way the confited toms add a richness, sweetness and depth to the soup. We also round out the flavors and dial up the sweetness with the addition of a bit of summer melon, which plays against the acidity of the tomatoes. Many gazpacho recipes would have you strain the soup before serving, but we skip that step to keep the goodness of all that fiber intact and also because it’s waaayyyy easier not too. Cool in the fridge for 4 hours or more for maximum “Ahhhhh” effect, or, if you’re short on time, serve it straight away, or place the individual bowls on ice, if you like.
The Stats
~10 mins total time
Yields 8–10 adult servings, or about a quart. Recipe can easily be halved.
Ingredients
2 cups confit tomato, drained of as much oil as possible
2 cups cubed cantaloupe or similar sweet, orange-flesh melon
1 small summer squash or zucchini, roughly chopped
1 medium Persian cucumber, peeled and roughly chopped
1 medium pepper (any non-spicy variety) cored, deseeded and roughly chopped
2 cloves of garlic, peeled
½ of a small-medium mild, sweet yellow or white onion, roughly chopped (you can add more onion after tasting if you’d like it to be punchier)
Juice of half a lemon
2 tablespoons of red wine or sherry vinegar
1-2 tablespoons of fresh mint leaves, plucked from the stems
Sea salt to taste
The Method
In a high-speed blender or food processor, combine the confited tomatoes, melon, squash, cucumber, pepper, garlic, and onion, and blend until homogenous.
Add the juice of half a lemon (careful to avoid seeds), the vinegar, and mint leaves and blend until thoroughly incorporated. Taste and adjust for salt. This is your chance to add more of any of the ingredients if you feel like the flavor balance needs any tweaking. Too thick? Add a little water, or even a couple ice cubes, and blend again.
To serve, ladle into bowls and drizzle with a little olive oil (perhaps, using the Spout?). A nice but totally option garnish can be made by finely cubing cucumber and slicing a few cherry tomatoes in half and placing them in the center along with some torn mint or basil. Little croutons (store-bought or homemade) add nice crunch too.
A batch of cherry tomatoes ready to go into the oven in the Great Jones Little Hottie. Once the tomatoes were sauce-ready, we whipped up a batch of bucatini in the *perfectly sized* Dutch Baby before serving it in one of the Stir Crazy Bowls.
Making this sauce is soooooo easy that we hardly feel it justifies the typical recipe formatting. The most challenging part of this dish will be figuring out how much pasta to cook for yourself or your family.
Once you’ve done that, boil it according to the package instructions (and/or the number of teeth in your child’s mouth) and, while it’s boiling, make the sauce:
Use about ½ cup of confited tomatoes (drained of excess oil) per serving of pasta.
Put tomatoes, along with some of the confited garlic from the confit pan (and a clove of fresh garlic too if you are a garlic-loving family), into a high-speed blender or food processor and blitz until creamy and homogenous.
Strain your pasta (we like bucatini for this dish, but it works with literally any pasta shape), put it in a mixing bowl, add a pat of (totally optional) butter, toss to melt, then add the sauce, a little at a time, until your noodles are sauced to your liking. Taste and adjust salt and pepper.
Grate fresh Parm over top, add some torn basil leaves if you like, and serve!
We all know and love Caprese. You can almost never go wrong with it (even when the tomatoes aren’t great). This version honors the original, but uses the sweet, jammy confited tomatoes to deepen and enrich the dish. This is more of an “assemble” job than a “recipe,” so buy mozzarella according to how many people you anticipate feeding and use about an equal amount of tomato confit.
The Stats
5–10 mins total
Ingredients
Mozzarella (whatever kind you prefer: buffalo, bocconcini, fior di latte, etc.)
Tomato confit
Basil
Sea Salt
Ground black pepper
Balsamic vinegar
Organic lemon
The Method
Drain and pat dry the mozzarella and, unless using something small like bocconcini, slice into generous slices, about ½-inch thick. Arrange these in more or less a single layer on a platter (without being too precious about the assembly).
Drain the confited tomatoes from any excess oil and heap them on top of the mozzarella.
Zest a lemon overtop, season with a little salt, shower with whole or roughly torn basil leaves and drizzle balsamic over the whole dish.
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We cooked this dish (and most dishes that require cooking, tbh) in the Great Jones Dutch Baby.
If you’ve been reading the Green Spoon for a while, you know we love having a big batch o’ lentils around (see: our recipe for The Best Lentil Soup that we posted in March). This is a quick, easy and criminally savory approach to a summertime lentil salad. It’s great room temperature or heated up, doctored with toppings and eaten alone or enjoyed as a side to some grilled chicken or a bowl of grains.
The Stats
Active time: 10 minutes, total time: 45 minutes
Yields ~6-8 serving
Ingredients
2 cups of brown lentils
1.5 cups of confited tomatoes (with one clove of confited garlic)
1 carrot, peeled and minced
1 stalk of celery, minced
Olive oil
Crumbled feta cheese (optional)
A few tablespoons of fresh cilantro (optional)
The Method
Add a glug of olive oil to a heavy-bottomed pot (like this Great Jones Dutch Baby which we adore and use every day) and turn the heat to medium-low. Add the carrot, celery, tomatoes (with garlic) and stir to combine. Let those cook together and sizzle lightly for 5 minutes.
Add the lentils and stir and then add 3 cups of water. Turn the heat to high and when the water boils, turn to low and cover, letting the lentils simmer until all of the water is absorbed, about 20 minutes.
We love to eat the first batch topped with cilantro and feta, but feel free to tuck into your lentils with whatever herb-cheese-whatever combination you like!
We added the tomatoes to a mozzarella and pesto pizza! Deliciousness!
I made the gazpacho, it was tip top! The rest of the tomato confit will be used shortly!