Braised Tomatoes with Burrata: The Best Appetizer You’ve Never Heard Of
What’s creamy and full of umami richness and juicy sweetness and is a little bit warm, but cool enough to love on even a hot summer day and easy to make but really impressive, too? This braised tomato-covered burrata recipe! Take fresh cherry tomatoes—or grape tomatoes work, too—and braise them in olive oil that’s perfumed with fresh garlic and fresh basil. Then pour those blistered, olive oil-soaked tomatoes all over a milky white mound of ready-to-burst fresh burrata for an appetizer that’s truly show-stopping. With plenty of bread and a big salad, this tomato and burrata recipe could even make for a light dinner. Just add some good, chilled wine (Italian whites can’t be beat with a meal like this) and bask in the afterglow of culinary triumph.
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What Is Burrata Cheese?
Burrata is an Italian fresh cheese usually made from cow’s milk that is basically heaven on earth. It’s milky and creamy and if you love fresh mozzarella, you’re going to be head-over-heels for burrata. We’ll do a quick burrata 101, for the uninitiated:
How is burrata different from mozzarella? Burrata is made from fresh mozzarella curds that are stretched and folded into a little pouch and then—brace yourself—filled with thick cream and some more stringy bits of mozzarella curd so that when you cut it open it absolutely oozes out in the most luscious, irresistible way.
And if you’re wondering where to buy burrata most grocery stores carry burrata, check your local specialty shops and especially if you have a great cheesemonger in your town! Any place you’d go for truly fabulous cheeses and charcuterie should have burrata. You can also order it online if you really can’t find it in a shop nearby.
What does burrata go well with? EVERYTHING. You can put it on pizza, atop a simple salad, or really anything you want. Burrata is decadent and delicious enough to stand on its own as an appetizer with some great bread and olive oil. But we really think that it goes best with.....
Braised Cherry Tomatoes
When you love a food as dearly as we love burrata, it’s essential to dream up the most perfect use for it. Burrata needs no accompaniment, and we’d certainly never want to compete with its milky, creamy, oozing perfection. But when we get our hands on a perfect ball of burrata, we feel a particular kind of anxiety—like we’ve got to come up with a way to serve burrata that honors its marvelousness, or ELSE. Thus, these silky, umami-rich braised cherry tomatoes were born. Fresh tomatoes and fresh mozzarella come together to make a classic caprese salad—one of the worlds most perfect foods—and so we took the idea of that ideal partnership and applied it to burrata and braised tomatoes. Each of them—the burrata and the braised tomatoes—is an over-the-top riff on the caprese salad’s fresh tomatoes and fresh mozzarella, but the partnership holds strong and together they perfectly enhance the other without detracting from their individual greatness.
How to Make This Easy Burrata Appetizer
Placing a rustic, gorgeous, restaurant-level platter of these braised tomatoes with burrata on the table will make you feel like a complete domestic hero, like some kind of amazing Nigella Lawson / Martha Stewart / Gabrielle Hamilton hybrid creature who just throws together a few ingredients and makes culinary magic all the time without breaking a sweat. Yeah, it’s that good. And even better? Our braised tomatoes with burrata recipe is so. Dead. Easy. Truly! But your guests don’t need to know that. Here’s how to make it:
Buy some really good burrata cheese.
Warm the olive oil in a big oven safe skillet with the tomatoes, salt, basil and garlic.
Cover the skillet and let the tomatoes braise for about 20 minutes over medium heat.
Take the lid off and move the skillet under your broiler just long enough to take on a bit of char.
Pour the tomatoes over the burrata and serve with lots of good bread.
Tools You’ll Need:
More Fresh Mozzarella and Burrata Recipes To Try
Summer Appetizers Are The Best Appetizers of All
When produce is perfect and fresh cheese are at their peak, delicious meals like this come together with such ease. It’s the very best time of year to be a home cook and food lover, don’t you think? Try this braised tomatoes and burrata recipe, and let us know how you like it, OK? Share a photo and tag us on Instagram using @themodernproper and #themodernproper so that we can see your stuff! Happy eating!
