Novel Noodles: Oven Roasted Fresh Tomato Sauce

Making a sauce – whether for pasta, BBQ, or just about anything else - is one of the few times where canned ingredients tend to actually be better than fresh.

Diced tomatoes are perfect for reducing down with other ingredients for spaghetti sauces, but this week we wanted to try something different than our traditional marinara sauce. For oven roasted fresh tomato sauce, you'll need:

• 5 – 6 on the vine tomatoes
• 2 carrots
• 1 yellow or white onion
• 2 Tbsp. Minced garlic
• Olive oil
• Salt, Pepper, and Thyme for seasoning

Our normal go-to tomatoes are Roma, both for their flavor and because they tend to be less pricey in our area. On the vine tomatoes have a distinct flavor and smell that are very appealing, however, so we went with that variety instead for this experiment (they are also great for slicing and eating with salt/pepper and cottage cheese). Here I've cored the tomatoes and then sliced them half, setting them in a large baking dish:

Next, peel and chop the carrots, then toss them and the minced garlic in with the halved tomatoes.

Slice the onion into rings, add to the baking dish, and then drizzle everything with a couple of teaspoons of olive oil.

Before throwing in the oven, add some flavor-enhancing and aromatic seasonings, like salt, pepper, and thyme.

You want all the vegetables to get very soft, so pop the dish in an oven set to a high temperature like 425 degrees, and bake for at least 45 minutes.

See how the skin is crackling and raised off the flesh of the tomato when the dish comes out of the oven? That should pull off easily with a fork. Remove and discard the tomato skins, as they will make the sauce more bitter.

Now we're going to pour all the vegetables and any liquid in the pan into a food processor and pulse until it's more of a sauce consistency.

For a little heat, you could add a dash of cayenne or two. If you want to take the flavor a more traditional route, you could also add in a few splashes of balsamic vinegar and a few teaspoons of basil or oregano.

The texture is more chunky than standard tomato sauce, so you'll probably won't to use something like sphaghetti or linguine.

Sprinkle some Parmesan on top and you're good to go!

While this was a fun change of pace, we still love our traditional on-the-stove marinara with canned tomatoes, so we probably won't be switching permanently. If you love the smell and texture of this sauce though, you could try roasting different vegetables for different flavors - from red bell peppers to eggplant and just about anything in between.