Tomatoes stuffed with minced meat: traditional recipe

Tomatoes stuffed with minced meat almost always go wrong in the same place: water. Three steps solve the problem. Salt the inside of the hollowed-out tomatoes and turn them upside down on a rack for 20 minutes to drain. Bind the stuffing with breadcrumbs soaked in milk, which trap the juices instead of letting them run. Finally, pour uncooked rice into the dish around the tomatoes: it soaks up the cooking juices during the 45 to 55 minutes in the oven at 180 °C.

You get tomatoes that hold their shape, a firm stuffing and a side dish that is already cooked, instead of stuffing swimming in liquid. Here is the full method, from the size of the tomatoes to the lid put back on at the end of cooking. The proportions of the basic minced meat stuffing can then be adapted for any vegetable.

Getting tomatoes stuffed with minced meat right: hollow, salt, drain

Preparing the tomatoes takes four steps, set out below in order.

Choose round, firm vine tomatoes of 150 to 200 g that still feel taut under your finger. Below 150 g, the cavity does not hold enough stuffing; above 200 g, the walls collapse before the end of cooking. Avoid beefsteak tomatoes, which are too juicy, and very ripe tomatoes whose skin splits in the oven. Allow two tomatoes per person for a main course.

Cut off a lid one third of the way down, on the stalk side, with a serrated knife. Scoop out the inside with a melon baller, leaving a wall of 5 to 8 mm: any thinner and it collapses; any thicker and it stays raw in the middle. A tomato is about 94 % water, and the pulp you remove represents 40 to 60 g of liquid per tomato, all of which stays out of the dish.

Now comes the key step. Salt the inside of each tomato with a good pinch of fine salt, then turn them upside down on a rack set over a container. Leave them to drain for 20 minutes at room temperature: the salt draws water out of the cells by osmosis and you can see the liquid running out. Then pat dry with kitchen paper.

Do not throw the pulp away: drain it, remove the seeds and chop it with the onion. If you want an even cut without turning the flesh into purée, a vegetable chopper does the job in a few seconds.

A stuffing with 15 or 20 % fat, bound with egg and breadcrumbs

Fat is what holds the stuffing together: aim for 15 to 20 % fat in total, otherwise the stuffing dries out and shrinks into a ball in the middle of the tomato. For 500 g of meat, enough for six to eight tomatoes, use minced beef at this fat level, chuck for example, or half beef and half minced lamb. Mince at the last moment, with the meat well chilled between 0 and 2 °C, using a 6 mm plate for a fine texture or 8 mm for a more rustic stuffing.

A meat grinder cuts the fibres instead of crushing them, which limits the water released during cooking, unlike a food processor bowl. Then add to the meat:

• 1 whole egg
• 60 g of stale bread, crusts removed, soaked for 5 minutes in 10 cl of milk, then squeezed
• the chopped onion and pulp
• 2 garlic cloves and 3 tablespoons of flat-leaf parsley
• 6 g of salt (12 g per kilo of meat) and pepper

Mix by hand without packing it down, just enough to combine. The binder is not a detail: it is what holds in the water released by the meat and the tomato.

Should you brown the minced meat before stuffing the tomatoes?

Many recipes pre-cook it, but that is not the traditional method. Raw stuffing cooks in 45 to 55 minutes inside the tomato and stays juicier, whereas pre-cooked stuffing dries out in the oven. Just sweat the onion, garlic and pulp in a frying pan for 5 minutes to evaporate their water, leave to cool, then mix them into the raw meat.

Uncooked rice in the dish and 45 to 55 minutes at 180 °C

Uncooked rice is the second barrier against the juices. Spread 120 g of uncooked long-grain rice over the bottom of an oiled baking dish, with 25 cl of hot chicken stock. Place the stuffed tomatoes on top, without letting them touch, and pour the liquid collected during draining into the rice: it flavours the base instead of drowning the tomatoes. The rice absorbs about twice its volume in liquid and finishes cooking with the tomatoes.

Fill each tomato in a slight dome, about 80 g of stuffing, without packing it down. Bake at 180 °C (thermostat 6 on French ovens) fan, with the lids placed beside them in the dish. Allow 45 minutes for 150 g tomatoes and 55 minutes for 200 g ones. Put the lids back on the tomatoes for the last 20 minutes: they finish cooking without drying out.

The stuffing is ready when its centre reaches 70 to 75 °C, the top is golden and the walls stay firm under the spoon. The oven logic is the same as for oven-baked potato and minced meat dishes, where starch also acts as a sponge.

Variations, leftovers and mistakes that ruin the dish

The method works for other stuffed vegetables too. Courgettes stuffed with minced meat need the same salting and draining, peppers can skip it, and aubergines need 15 minutes in the oven first. As for the meat, minced lamb gives a version with cumin and mint; a 100 % beef stuffing works well if you go up to 20 % fat. Peppers and squash have their own recipes too: peppers stuffed with minced meat and oven-baked stuffed butternut squash.

Three mistakes come up again and again:

• Packing the stuffing into the tomato: it compacts and releases its water all at once.
• Adding passata or water on top of the stock: the rice becomes saturated and the base turns to soup.
• Taking the dish out too early: under 45 minutes, the walls are still raw.

Stuffed tomatoes keep for 3 days in the fridge in an airtight container and reheat in 15 minutes at 160 °C, never in the microwave, which makes the skin soggy.

Can you prepare tomatoes stuffed with minced meat the day before?

Yes, and it is handy for a family meal, as long as you keep the components separate. Drain the tomatoes and make the stuffing the day before, then keep them in the fridge at 4 °C in two separate containers. Fill them just before baking: a filled tomato left for 12 hours releases its water into the stuffing and loses its shape.