Stuffed Tomatoes
I love these! For these, try to find the largest tomatoes you can. I make these anytime I see those giant tomatoes at the store. It’s like they call out to me- “stuff me!” One of these guys with a protein and you have a complete meal. Back in the day we used to stuff these with white rice that took forever to cook! These days I use minute rice to cut down on the cooking time. You can use brown rice or white rice here I used brown. These make an awesome lunch the next day – if you have any left over!
The insides of these tomatoes get scooped out and pureed with garlic, onion olive oil and fresh basil. The filling then gets mixed with the rice and spooned bake into the tomatoes. Then it all gets baked until you have this beautiful fluffy tomato rice with a sweet tomato to go along with it. Usually there is extra filling. I always spoon the extra filling around the tomatoes. When the extra rice filling gets cooked, it almost gets crispy! I love that.
My Mom still makes this one all the time.
Rice Stuffed Tomatoes
Ingredients
- 4 large tomatoes
- 3 cloves garlic smashed
- 1 small onion quartered
- 3 leaves fesh basil
- 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
- 1 cup instant rice brown or white will work
- 1/4 cup olive oil plus some for drizzling
- salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Pre-heat your oven to 375. Wash your tomatoes. Cut out the top of tour tomato by making a medium sized circle around the core. Cut off the top. Keep the tomato hats for later.
- Now using a spoon, scoop out all the pulp of the tomato and add it to the bowl of your food processor or blender. Do this to the remaining tomatoes.
- You should now have a little tomato bowl!
- To the pulp add the olive oil, garlic, onion, basil and salt and pepper. Now puree the mixture.
- Empty the mixture into a bowl and add your rice and Parmesan cheese. Stir.
- Place the tomatoes in an oiled casserole dish and season them with a drizzle of olive oil and salt & pepper.
- Spoon the rice mixture into each tomato. Don't overfill. The rice will puff up. Put the tops back on. Spoon any remaining rice mixture all around the tomatoes.
- Bake at 375 for about 45 minutes.
