easy grilled tomatoes – Twice as Tasty

I’m sharing a series of recipes in my Twice as Tasty column for the Flathead Beacon that revolve around grilled tomatoes: first last week’s Grilled Tomato Bloody Mary Mix, continuing this week with a freezable pizza sauce, and next week with a recipe that can be paired with one or both.

We fill a good portion of a large hoop house with tomato plants each year. When the harvested crop starts to pile up in boxes, one of my favorite ways to deal with the overload is to grill the tomatoes. If I’m too busy to process them further, I stockpile the juice and solids separately in freezer-safe containers until I have time to turn them into sauce and more.

In a pizza sauce, grilled tomato solids have a deep, smoky flavor enhanced by grilled onion and garlic, as well as fresh homegrown herbs. I find it most useful to freeze the finished sauce in silicone ice trays that make cubes of various sizes, from a couple of tablespoons to 1-cup portions.
Learn to make Grilled Tomato Pizza Sauce

If you’ve been following the Twice as Tasty blog from the beginning, you might remember how the entire idea of writing a food blog started with my grilled tomato recipes, especially the bloody Mary mix recipe that I share this week column for the Flathead Beacon. The recipe has improved with every season as I fine-tuned a balance between chunky salsa in a glass and thin, overly drained juice. For a long time, I blended some tomato solids back into the juice, but this left slightly chewy bits and too many seeds. I’ve finally settled on using a large-holed colander to separate juice and solids and then pressing the result through a fine-mesh strainer to leave just the seeds behind.

This recipe has also evolved from one I jarred and sealed in a boiling water bath to one I prefer to make in batches from the freezer. The frozen juice tastes fresher, and it keeps the smoky tomato juice on hand for easy winter lunches like Tomato Juice Soup.
Learn to make Grilled Tomato Bloody Mary Mix