Tomato Week: Roasted Cherry Tomatoes with Angel Hair Pasta and Homemade Croutons

I have posted about roasting tomatoes a few times before, but can't have tomato week and not talk about roasting cherry tomatoes. I hope by now you guys have tried my absolute favorite way to use up a lot of the little bite-sized tomatoes - cut them in half and put in a shallow roasting dish, toss with a little olive oil and coarse salt (other seasonings are up to you - pepper, Italian blend, whatever), and bake at 350' to 400' until you like the consistency stirring occasionally. The longer they bake the more they thicken up and turn into an almost glazed texture which is so so so good (!), shorter time is still good and keeps them a little 'fresher' and lighter texture - just depends on what you want to do with them.

For this dish I let the tomatoes really cook down, at least an hour (turn the temp down if they seem like they are cooking too fast - you'l know if they start to turn too dark but not getting thick and syrupy), then tossed them (including the juice and olive oil) with cooked angel hair pasta. Another one of our favorites is to add homemade croutons (click to see how I make them, very easy!) to red-sauced pasta - almost like a panzanella bread salad, the croutons soak up the sauce but still add a little texture to the dish. Nothing like adding bread to pasta to keep this dish low-carb LOL. Whatever, it's good. For a little more color and to beef up the veggies I added some chopped fresh spinach this time - add whatever else you like...cooked mushrooms, peas, chopped asparagus or broccoli would all be good.

Oh man do I love this pasta and roasted tomatoes SO MUCH!!!


one year ago: morning glory muffins
two years ago: Japanese steakhouse carrot-ginger salad dressing

Homemade Croutons

I don't love croutons and usually pick them off...unless they are these homemade ones! Have you ever  made them? They are so easy and taste SO much better than the store bought kind in the bag!

I usually use sliced bread, whatever I have on hand (and if it's sort of old that's a good thing, this is a great way to use up stale bread); remove the crust if you want, depends on the bread - if the crust is too crunchy or I want the croutons to look more uniform I remove it; cube it up into bite sized pieces, toss with melted butter and coarse salt and pepper (and any other spices you want, I usually just do salt and pepper). Bake in the oven at 400' for just a few minutes, turn them over once the bottoms are golden and toasty, and give them a few more minutes...it doesn't take long - watch that they don't burn. I don't like them super crunchy, bake them until they are done as much as you'd like. That's it! So good.

Sometimes I'll make the croutons in really big pieces, or even just do the whole slice of bread without cutting it up - that makes a great base for Caesar salad. Put the large crouton down on a plate and top with dressed Caesar salad and parmesan. 

*UPDATE 1/31/23: I reread this post the other day when I was making croutons and couldn't remember if I had posted how to make them - this old post said to drizzle with olive oil but the picture is melted butter haha!! I don't ever remember drizzling with olive oil, for as long as I can remember I've done melted butter and they are amazing. I'm adding this updated note in case you have followed the original post all this time and use olive oil - if you've bookmarked this page for the recipe and now it say butter instead of oil I figured I'd give you a heads up down here haha!