French Meat Stuffed Tomatoes Recipe (Tomates Farcies)

TL;DR

This is a French-stuffed tomato recipe. It's a classic dinner meal commonly prepared in Northern French homes.

We call these ground meat stuffed tomatoes, tomate farcies in French. My mother and grandmother have always made this dish, and it's part of our weekly meal rotation.

It's the perfect family casserole dish, and it's wholesome, prepared from scratch with all-natural ingredients.

The meat and sauce is seasoned with herbs and if you get fresh herbs, use that!

Do you like meat stuffed vegetable dishes? Then you might enjoy meat stuffed patty pan squash or the Ground meat stuffed baked Zucchini.

Ingredients

You will need tomatoes that are filled with a home-seasoned meat filling and at last a tomato sauce.

You will need some ingredients, with most being seasoning ingredients. The recipe is simple and not all too complex!

• Tomatoes — The tomatoes should be all the same size so that they all cook evenly.

For the Meat Filling:

• Stale Bread — Retains moisture of the meat filling.
• Milk — To soften and soak the stale bread
• Ground Meat — We use 50:50 ground beef and pork because the combination tastes better. Ground beef on its own can turn out too dry, except if you get a regular batch of ground beef and not a lean beef (which has become the norm).
• Oregano Dried
• Thyme Dried
• Olive Oil
• Onion chopped fine
• Garlic Cloves chopped fine
• Parsley — fresh, chopped fine
• Salt & Black Pepper Ground

For the Sauce:

• Onion
• Tomato Sauce
• Water
• Fresh Herbs (or dried herbs)
• Bay Leaves
• Olive Oil

How to make it?

To prepare my healthy stuffed tomatoes is fairly easy.

Just follow the 3 simple steps to make this dinner meal from scratch.

Find detailed ingredients and instructions in the recipe card further below.

Step 1

Soak the stale bread pieces with the milk.

Prepare the meat stuffing in a bowl by combining the ground meat, milk-soaked bread, dried seasoning, and garlic.

Step 2

Cut off one end of your tomatoes and hollow them out.

Place the juicy tomato pieces into a casserole dish and place the hollowed-out tomatoes in between in a row.

Stuff your tomatoes with the meat mixture and close with the cut off tomato end.

Step 3

Drizzle tomato sauce, olive oil into the casserole dish with fresh or dried herbs, bay leaves and water.

Bake your meat tomatoes until the meat is cooked through.

Tips and tricks

I have a few tricks and tips on how to make the best oven roasted stuffed tomatoes with mince, that I Would like to share with YOU.

You see, to get your low-carb stuffed tomatoes juicy on the inside and perfectly cook on the outside requires a few things.

You deserve the best tasting, most flavorful tomatoes with meat!

Secret to the Juiciest Meat Stuffed Tomatoes

To make the juiciest baked stuffed tomatoes with beef or pork you will need to look out for other things besides cooking duration.

The secrete to my super moist and juicy meat stuffing is the inclusion of milk-soaked stale bread, which locks in the moisture in the meat stuffing.

This is the same principle as in homemade meatballs.

Another reason why your meat stuffing might turn out juicier is the choice of meat. Lean meat might be lean, but because it lacks fats, it's also crazy dry and lacks flavor.

Choose ground meats that are about 80:20 meat and fat.

I like to combine ground pork and beef (which is common in Europe) to create the juiciest stuffing ever!

Ground pork is notoriously fat, and beef mince compliments ground pork really well!

More flavor

Onion and Garlic are a tomato meat stuffing's best friend!

Yet, by adding a selection of herbs to the stuffed tomato dish, you can alleviate the aroma of the dish to a whole new level!

This is how I do it:

I season the meat stuffing with dried herbs including, oregano, thyme, and some fresh parsley. Technically, you can also use a ready-made Herbes de Provence seasoning blend.

Next, I add herbs into the casserole dish for the stuffed tomato sauce, and that's a whole game changer in this southern french recipe.

We also call them stuffed tomatoes Provencal.

Dried vs. Fresh Herbs

Basically, I leave you to pick if you want to use dried or fresh herbs for the sauce. You can also pick the herbs that you add.

I add fresh thyme, rosemary, and savory whenever possible, yet I do understand that these herbs are not always available. You could try to grow fresh herbs in your garden or next to your kitchen window.

If you can't get savory, skip it and take more rosemary and thyme instead. I think rosemary, thyme, and savory together create the best flavor combo in this dish.

In winter, or when I'm in Asia, whenever I prepare this dish, I use dried thyme, rosemary, and savory instead and the dish is still delicious, and you can do that too, of course.

But nothing beats fresh herbs to create the BEST stuffed tomatoes ground meat.

Store

Leftovers can be refrigerated and warmed up again. I keep them in a rectangular glass dish and place the stuffed tomatoes up right before I close the dish with a lid.

You can store them for up to 3 days cooled in your fridge.

Gradually warm them up again at a lower heat temperature so that they don't try out.

Freezing

You can freeze your filled tomatoes and cook them whenever you need them at a later date.

To accomplish that, prepare the meat stuffing and hollow out your tomatoes to stuff them with the meat.

Keep the stuffed uncooked tomatoes in a freezer-friendly container and freeze

When you are ready to use them, keep the tomatoes out to defrost a bit, then place into your casserole dish with the sauce ingredients and bake as per direction until the meat is cooked.

Serving

• plain cooked rice or flavored rice, as in aromatic lemon rice or clove spice flavored rice.
• creamy polenta or grits
• cooked couscous such as a couscous salad
• a cold side salad