Roasted Tomatoes Are The Trick To Elevate Your Spaghetti Sauce

The cold weather has begun to set in across the United States, and tomatoes, a hot weather crop, are out of season. Nevertheless, it's not too late to take these versatile, flavor-packed fruits and transform them into a delicious homemade dish. Vine-ripened summer tomatoes might be the juiciest and sweetest at their peak, but a little creativity goes a long way when it comes to elevating your out-of-season tomatoes — "you just have to approach them the right way," insists The New York Times.

Depending on where you live, if you buy a supermarket clamshell of cherry tomatoes in the wintertime, they're likely to be too watery and mild to enjoy in a fresh salad. No matter, as you can cook them to remove their excess moisture and concentrate their sweet, tangy flavors. Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver is a fan of this method, explaining on Instagram that roasting your cherry tomatoes (whether or not they're in season) with herbs and olive oil leaves you with "a great base for soups, pastas, risottos, pizzas and more." And for a good cold-weather spaghetti sauce made with fresh tomatoes, especially, roasting is key.

According to Susan Olayinka of Mashed, you can roast easily cherry tomatoes in your air fryer, which caramelizes the sugars so they taste extra intense. The process takes less than 15 minutes and only five ingredients, and then your flavor-packed tomatoes are ready to be smeared on top of bread, added to a chunky tomato soup, or, of course, used in your spaghetti sauce. You can employ the same technique in a regular oven, simply roasting the small tomatoes whole in an olive oil-covered pan with a sprinkle of salt.

The Los Angeles restaurant Botanica is also a proponent of roasting tomatoes to hone in on their sweetness, saying that just 20 minutes in the oven takes the fruit to new heights (especially with a touch of honey or balsamic vinegar to make up for an out-of-season lack of sugar). Once they're done roasting, leave them whole or throw them in the blender and simmer on the stove. With the addition of garlic and seasonings, such as woody herbs like rosemary and thyme, these complex-in-flavor tomatoes will be just the upgrade to basic tomato sauce you've been looking for. So next time you want to elevate your homemade spaghetti sauce, get out those fresh tomatoes and pop them into the oven or air fryer with a glug of olive oil and some garlic.