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Confit tomatoes are the sweetest, meltiest, most delicious tomato recipe. Garlicky, soft, juicy, and packed with oregano flavor, tomatoes made this way can literally elevate any kind of meal.
Perfect as an appetizer, on bread, bruschetta, or on top of a freshly baked rosemary focaccia bread. These confit tomatoes are even great on pasta, or with pan-fried tofu.
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What are confit tomatoes?
Confit cherry tomatoes are a very easy recipe. Cherry (but also plum, or date) tomatoes, cut in half and seasoned with everyday ingredients like olive oil and garlic, and then slow-baked in the oven till they almost literally melt and caramelize.
The process of baking them slowly, at a low temperature, will boost their flavor.
In fact, those confit tomatoes have an intense, sweet, and yet salty, garlicky flavor, and they are a perfect umami booster on top of many other dishes. Watch a 1-min story on how to make confit tomatoes here.
Since they are so versatile, we like to serve them when we have people over, for brunch or dinner, or when we go to a picnic or dinner gathering.
Everyone is always so impressed, because they look so innocent on their baking tray or in their little jar, but then they hit you with their incredible flavor as soon as you put them in your mouth.
Eat them on bruschetta, or on top of our mushroom pasta. They are also perfect to spice up simpler meals, like spaghetti aglio olio, or on top of our no egg zucchini pie.
But my favorite way to eat them is to serve them next to our no-knead rosemary focaccia bread.
Try dipping a piece of freshly baked focaccia directly into the tray with the tomato confit. It's an unforgettable experience.
Ingredients & Substitutions
- Tomatoes: any type of small tomato is suitable for this recipe. Our favourite are cherry tomatoes, but you can also pick date tomatoes, plum tomatoes, and grape tomatoes.
- Olive oil: best if extra virgin olive oil if you can. The flavour will be a lot richer with that. As an alternative you could use regular olive oil.
- Sugar: helps caramelize the tomatoes and it adds loads of flavour. It also balances the acidity of the tomato, and the sharpness of the garlic.
- Garlic, salt, and dried oregano: that's all we use to season the tomatoes. The garlic should be finely minced, or crushed with a garlic masher. If you don't have dried oregano you could use dried thyme.
How to make confit tomatoes
Preheat the oven to 300F or 150C. Line your baking tray with parchment paper. I add a splash of water to the baking tray to make the parchment paper stick.
I use a round baking tray but you can use any shape, as long as it fits all tomatoes comfortably, not one on top of each other.
Rinse the tomatoes, then cut them in half and arrange them on the baking tray, facing up. They should be close, but not overlap.
Mince the garlic very finely. If you use a knife make sure it's really fine, almost like a paste.
You can see how I do it in our YouTube video If you like. Alternatively use a garlic press to mash the garlic.
Add the minced garlic to a bowl, then add the olive oil. Mix together, then add the tip of a spoon of garlic and oil on top of each tomato.
Then add sugar, salt, and oregano on top of each piece of tomato. Add a small pinch of each ingredient for each tomato.
It's hard to quantify the amounts here, but what's important is that each tomato gets a bit of everything, so that every bite is as delicious as the next.
Bake in the oven for about 1 hour and 30 minutes at 300F or 150C.
Tips
Small ripe tomatoes are best for this recipe as they are naturally sweet and bite-size so you can just pop one in your mouth without having to cut it.
The garlic must be chopped finely, or mashed with a garlic press so that it will completely lose its sharpness during baking and it will melt in your mouth with the tomatoes.
Sugar balances out the sharpness of the garlic, the acidity of the tomatoes, and it also gives it a nice caramelized aroma.
Don't take shortcuts. I know, it's tempting, but tomato confit is best when baked at low temperature (300F or 150C) for about 1.5 hours.
Storage
Store your confit tomato in an air-tight container in the refrigerator for up to 4 days. I do not recommend freezing them.
Also, I do not recommend storing confit tomatoes submerged in oil, unless you know exactly what you are doing.
Preserving food in oil, if done incorrectly, can create the right environment for botulism bacteria to grow, and you don't want that to happen.
Dinner Ideas
Did you know that we develop our recipes to go together for a complete dinner meal plan? Serve tomato confit next to:
Focaccia no knead with rosemary: dip the focaccia in the juice of the confit tomatoes and stuff it with a few of the tomatoes.
Chickpea salad: a perfect palate cleanser after the intense flavor of the confit tomatoes.
Recipe
Confit tomatoes recipe
Ingredients
- 500 grams (18 oz) cherry tomatoes or grape, date, plum tomatoes
- 30 grams (2 tablespoons) olive oil
- 20 grams (1.5 tablespoons) sugar
- 3 cloves garlic
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons dried oregano
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 300F or 150C. Line your baking tray with parchment paper. I add a splash of water to the baking tray to make the parchment paper stick.
- Rinse the tomatoes, then cut them in half and arrange them on the baking tray, facing up. They should be close, but not overlap.
- Mince the garlic very finely. If you use a knife make sure it's really fine, almost like a paste. You can see how I do it in our YouTube video If you like. Alternatively use a garlic press to mash the garlic.Add the minced garlic to a bowl, then add the olive oil. Mix together, then add the tip of a spoon of garlic and oil on top of each tomato.
- Then add sugar, salt, and oregano on top of each piece of tomato. Add a small pinch of each ingredient for each tomato. It's hard to quantify the amounts here, but what's important is that each tomato gets a bit of everything, so that every bite is as delicious as the next.
- Bake in the oven for about 1 hour and 30 minutes at 300F or 150C.
Full video on youtube @theplantbasedschool
Nutritional Values
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Did you try this recipe at home? Let us know in the comments below!
Buon appetito!
Nico
Rachel
The smell while these were cooking was amazing, and the taste - wow! Making the focaccia to go with it tonight, can't wait to try them together. I love your recipes because they do not complicate or overwhelm the food but allow the flavours to really come out.
Nico
Thank you soooo much for your message Rachel. We are very happy you liked the confit tomatoes 🙂
Catherine
I really like this recipe! I’ve made it 3 times in the past month because I love tomatoes cooked this way. I’ve substituted Greek oregano,thyme, and genovese basil in the recipe (because I grow all three in my garden) and they all worked very well.
Nico
That sounds just delicious, Catherine! Especially with the herbs from your own garden, yum! Cheers, Nico