Let me welcome you to tomato week! If you didn’t see in last week’s garden video it’s raining tomatoes for us in New York so I’ve been spending lots of quality time with our lovely tomatoes in the kitchen! Today I’m going to show you these Marinated Overnight Italian Diced Tomatoes which are easy and delicious! Tomorrow is all about creamy tomato soup! Later this week I’m giving you a quick tomato/rice dish that is perfect for taking to work for lunch! And finally I’m going to pick tomatoes, lots of them, and show you many photos of them like any proud tomato Mother would. So let’s jump in to tomato week!
We use diced tomatoes frequently in recipes so I like to always have some on hand. Last year I only made a few homemade batches but we went through them quickly so this year I was determined to make at least twice the number of batches to freeze.
Diced Tomatoes With No Boiling or Peeling
There’s 2 ways to go about making diced tomatoes, there’s the longer process of boiling and removing the peels (which is delicious but it takes time), or there’s this way whith is also delicious but is quick! We are picking at least 50 pounds of tomatoes a week right now so I need to be careful of time, or I’ll have to quit my job because preserving vegetables can sometimes be a full time job! I n this recipe, all you have to do is cut them up, marinate them over night in the refrigerator and then cook for 30 minutes. You can also duplicate this recipe as many times as you need per how many tomatoes you are picking. For example the recipe calls for 5 tomatoes but I quintupled it because I had so many tomatoes!
Enough chatting, let’s get cooking with our tomatoes!
Diced Tomatoes Recipe
Cut up your tomatoes. Beef tomatoes are great for this recipe, but you can also use plum tomatoes. Add salt, sugar, basil and parsley. Cover and refrigerate overnight. If you need quick diced tomatoes you can skip this step but for full flavor marinate them overnight. Place tomatoes in a pot over medium heat. Cook for 30 minutes and ta-da you have diced tomatoes ready to serve or freeze! Each bite of these diced tomatoes is so full of flavor! When making a big batch of these diced tomatoes I always store some in a mason jar in the refrigerator because I know I’ll use them up in the next 2-3 days. The rest I freeze.
Pin for later: Note: When these tomatoes cook you might be left with lots of tomato juice. Don’t throw this away. Turn this tomato juice into tomato paste! It’s really easy to do. Put the tomato juice into the pot and cook on medium/high heat. You want a consistent light boil until the juice boils off and you’re left with paste. This will range from 2-8 hours depending on how much juice you have. For example I had 16 cups (!) of juice and it took 6 hours to turn into tomato paste. Keep a eye on it and stir every 30 minutes to make sure it’s not burning or sticking to the pot. This is the full 16 cups of tomato juice of to the left. This is 4 hours later to the right. This is 1 hour later… tomato paste! I like to store the tomato paste in my Ball cube trays and throw them into any sauces that need thickening up. Have fun making this recipe! You won’t believe how yummy homemade tomato paste is until you’ve tried it!
