Maple Garlic Roasted Tomatoes

Addictively sweet with a little garlic bite, these maple garlic roasted tomatoes add a bright punch of flavor to salads, pizza, burgers, rice, pasta, soups, seafood, chicken, pork, veggies and even nachos! Use them on just about anything … you’ve never tasted tomatoes quite like this before. This method of roasting tomatoes is a total game changer.

Adapted slightly from Feast Glorious Feast.

There’s a bit of a story behind this recipe … I have a close-knit group of yoga friends that get together every Wednesday night for yoga, and then afterwards we go out for wine. (Since coronavirus, we’ve converted this to a virtual yoga class as of last week, with virtual happy hour after! It was super fun and SO good to see their faces again. Next week I get to lead the class … I’m a little nervous because I’ve not taught yoga in a virtual setting before, but I’m telling myself it’ll be fine.)

Anyway, there is one place we tend to frequent for our after-yoga happy hour. I don’t usually order food, but several of my friends do. One of their favorite things to order is their steak nachos. These nachos have always been good, but recently they upgraded the recipe and it’s now freaking ah-mazing! I was lucky to steal a few from one of my friends that ordered them (on more than one occasion … thanks friends!) and I have to say I am totally smitten with those nachos. I’ve not ordered them myself yet because there always seems to be extras especially since multiple people have started ordering them and they are more than happy to share. I love my yoga friends SO much!

Anyway, one of the restaurant’s recent upgrades to their nachos was to use wonton chips instead of tortilla chips, and after all the other good stuff they piled on and that addictive cheese sauce and bits of steak, then they topped them with some sweet little red things that looked sort of like tomatoes, but my friends couldn’t quite put their finger on what they were or how they made them taste so amazing. I was certain it was tomatoes roasted in maple syrup … I recognized that flavor, but their was something else too … I went searching online for recipes and found this one from Feast Glorious Feast. I should have guessed the “something else” was garlic. Duh. So obvious! And a very healthy dose of it. Salt provides the perfect counterpoint and actually intensifies the sweetness.

I haven’t attempted the nachos yet, but I put my little maple roasted tomatoes on a spinach salad with blue cheese and sauteed mushrooms and oh my gosh that was good. I was in total heaven eating that salad! I think I might have to go make that again, now that I think of it …

If you need more reasons to try these amazing little bites, I thought of a few more reasons you should make them, especially while we’re all quarantined at home because COVID-19:

1. They’re easy! They only take a few minutes of prep time and the rest is all done by the oven.
2. They will make your taste buds happy. I mean like, dance party happy. Don’t we all need a little happiness right now?
3. Oven roasting kills coronavirus (and pretty much any other germs that might have snuck into your tomatoes).
4. Roasting in the oven intensifies the flavor and preserves the tomatoes so they last longer.
5. Cooking tomatoes actually increases the healthy lycopene that helps your body battle disease. Tomato power!
6. They’re super versatile. You can use them to brighten up just about any savory dish … or even to top your avocado toast.

What if you don’t have maple syrup on hand? You can definitely substitute honey. It will change the flavor a bit, but your roasted cherry tomatoes will still be addictively sweet and intense, with that lovely garlic bite.

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