Sweet cherry tomatoes are cooked down here until they’re soft and bursting and are then finished with a splash of white wine vinegar to make a delicious sauce that’s good for steak, chicken, eggs, and so much more.
Sweet cherry tomatoes are cooked down here until they’re soft and bursting and are then finished with a splash of white wine vinegar to make a delicious sauce that’s good for steak, chicken, eggs, and so much more.
For most of my adult life, I couldn’t stand cooked tomatoes. I ate around the chunks of tomato in pasta sauces and on pizzas. I ordered my fajitas without tomatoes. I didn’t even particularly like chunky salsas.
All that changed when I first came across this recipe. It came in the form of a now-defunct meal kit service that I used years ago. In the original recipe it was used to top a very mediocre sirloin steak, but in the years since I’ve used it as a sauce for everything from steak to chicken to eggs to a full-on salad dressing. It’s honestly perfectly good eaten as a side dish as well.
It’s an entirely adaptable recipe – if you don’t have cherry tomatoes, you could dice up almost any kind of tomato you have on hand and still come away with a delicious sauce. And because there are so many other flavors going on here, you don’t have to be reliant on summer tomatoes. This dish is good all year round.
I call this a cherry tomato vinaigrette because I honestly don’t know what else to call it. And since it has olive oil and vinegar in it, I think vinaigrette is as good a title as anything, although “sauce” works just as well. Whenever I make this though, I tell my husband that “I’m making that tomato thing” and he always knows just what I mean.
To Make the Cherry Tomato Vinaigrette
Start by cutting your cherry tomatoes in half, and dicing either a whole small shallot or half of a large shallot.
Heat a non-stick pan over medium high heat, and add 1 tablespoon of olive oil. When it shimmers, add the shallots and let them cook for a minute or two until they turn translucent. Add the tomatoes, and let them cook down for 6-9 minutes. Smash them up a bit with the back of a wooden spoon to release their juices and remove from the heat.
Stir in a ½ tablespoon of olive oil and 2 tablespoons of white wine vinegar. Season to taste with salt.
Variations:
Although the mild flavors of a shallot work best here, a ¼ cup of small diced red onion will work in a pinch. I’ve even made this with no shallot at all, and it was still great.
Even the palest winter tomatoes will work in this dish, but you can use diced vine ripened or Roma tomatoes instead. Just make sure to leave a good portion of the seeds in the tomato, as you need the liquid to make the sauce.
You could use pretty much any vinegar in this and it would be great. Sherry vinegar is particularly good. Stay away from Balsamic though – it’s a little bit too sweet.
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Sara Rauckhorst
5 Min
12 Min
17 Min
Cherry Tomato Vinaigrette
Ingredients
- 1 small or half a large shallot, diced
- 1 pint of cherry tomatoes, cut in half
- 1 ½ tablespoons olive oil, divided
- 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
Instructions
- Heat a non stick skillet over medium high heat, and add 1 tablespoon of the oil to the skillet.
- Once the oil shimmers, add the diced shallot and let it cook for 1-2 minutes, or until translucent.
- Add the tomatoes and let them cook, stirring occasionally for 6-9 minutes, or until they are soft and beginning to burst. Smash them a bit with the back of a spoon and remove from the heat.
- Stir in the remaining olive oil and the vinegar and season to taste with salt.
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