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Mid July is about the time of year when tomatoes start coming full steam into season. I have 5 tomato plants in my garden that are now producing more tomatoes than we can think up ways of using them. (Gazpacho anyone?)
One quick and easy recipe that I played around with this week is to simply grill the tomatoes, cut side down, and season with olive oil, salt, pepper, and sliced basil. It’s so good!
When you are working with garden fresh tomatoes, sometimes doing less is more, because the produce is so good to begin with.
Do you have a garden that is full of tomatoes?
What are your ways of using up the bounty? Please let us know in the comments.
Grilled Tomatoes Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 firm, ripe tomatoes (not overly ripe or they will fall apart when you grill them), cut in half around the middle
- Olive oil
- Kosher salt (or fleur de sel if you can get it)
- Freshly ground black pepper
- 4 basil leaves, thinly sliced (roll them up like a cigar and then slice them to make nice thin slices)
Method
1 Remove watery pulp and seeds from tomatoes: Standing over a sink, use your fingers to gently dislodge and remove the watery pulp and seeds. (Although the seeds and pulp contain a lot of flavor, when you grill the tomatoes they are going to be lost anyway.)
2 Grill cut-side down: Preheat your grill on high heat for direct grilling. Use a grill basket
Season the tomatoes with salt and pepper. Brush the cut side of the tomatoes with olive oil. Brush the grill grate or grill pan with olive oil.
Place the tomatoes, cut side down on the grill surface. Cover the grill and let cook for about 4 minutes. (Check after 2 minutes.)
Use a metal spatula to lift tomatoes off of the grill for serving.
3 Serve: Place on a serving dish, cut side up. Drizzle a little more olive oil on the tomatoes. Sprinkle with just a little more salt and pepper. Sprinkle with thinly sliced basil.
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Elise Bauer is the founder of Simply Recipes. Elise launched Simply Recipes in 2003 as a way to keep track of her family's recipes, and along the way grew it into one of the most popular cooking websites in the world. Elise is dedicated to helping home cooks be successful in the kitchen. Elise is a graduate of Stanford University, and lives in Sacramento, California.
Grilled Tomatoes
Your recipe tastes awesome as is. My pet peeves about commenting on recipes is how some people highly rate recipes yet post all the changes they made. Boo, hiss. If you don’t like the recipe as is, post your own, not in the comments section of a recipe you piggybacked from. Author, your grilled tomatoes are awesome as is.
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Hi Jennifer, thank you for your comment. And glad you liked this recipe! You make a good point. It’s become customary for many commenters on recipes online to rate recipes and list all the changes they made. What we try to do these days at Simply Recipes is remove the star rating if the commenter mentions changing more than two big things, or omitting (or adding) major ingredients. But we still like to publish the comment, because there can be information that might be useful to other readers. Plus we just love hearing how people are cooking at home! Sharing and connecting is important, especially now.
I used a silicone grilling sheet and kept the tomato seeds and liquid. even though it was already pretty ripe, it stayed intact on the sheet. After turning it, I added some mozzarella cheese. It was wonderful.
I have been doing this for years, but what I do is I take the basil and ut in in a pestel and mortar.. then add the olive oil to it let is steep for a little bit then I se that oild to cook and finish with a fresh drizzle then add fresh basil!!
Italians make tomato sauce – passata, and store it in sterilized glass bottles (like recycled beer bottles) to eat all year long with their pasta. When you open a bottle, you cook the passata at least 30 mins to give the tomatoes a better flavor!
Looks divine!!! Thanks for this!