This year we planted our tomatoes on time and they have done surprisingly well. In fact, too well. One has over grown the neighboring tomato and cucumber plant. Lately, the largest plant has decided to give off a ton of tomatoes. Too many to just throw in a salad or eat by themselves. One of my favorite ways to use up extra tomatoes is to oven dry them!
Oven drying doesn’t get the tomatoes as dry as the sun dried tomatoes you buy a the store, but they do the job. The tomato gets so concentrated that when you eat one, the deep, complex tomato flavor is amazing. If I didn’t control myself, then I would just sit there and eat the whole tray of tomatoes. Such a great snack!
There are a couple of down sides. One, is that it takes a long time to dry without a dehydrator. Since there is not a fan to move the air around to remove the moisture faster, it takes a long time to dry out. And it doesn’t even dry them out all the way in the +/- 5 hrs that I had them drying. The second is that typically tomatoes are abundant during the summer, but having your oven on during the summer is not desirable. Although the oven is at a really low temperature, you don’t want to have a hot house during the summer. Luckily the area that I live in gets a nice breeze from the ocean, and the day I decided to dry my tomatoes it was gloomy and cold (I think it even sprinkled a bit which is weird since it is July).
Other than that, it is totally worth it. You can use these in several dishes. It goes great in salads, pastas, or spreads….or you can be like me, and eat them by themselves :).
Lessons Learned:
- Dry the tomatoes on the coolest day you can.
- Do as many tomatoes as you can. The tomatoes shrink and you get less than what you might think when you start.
- Try not to eat them all before you use them in the dish you made them for.
Oven-dried Tomatoes
- Small tomatoes (roma, cherry, whatever you have), cut in half
- olive oil (enough to coat the tomatoes)
- salt to taste
- optional: dried herbs like basil, oregano, parsley or garlic
- Preheat oven to 200 degrees F.
- In a large bowl, toss the halved tomatoes, olive oil, and salt together.
- Put the tomatoes in a single layer on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet.
- Put the tomatoes in the oven, and leave them alone. Let them bake for about 5-6 hrs or until they are at the level of dryness that you prefer.
- If not eaten right away, refrigerate.
Yum! I’ll have to try this, my tomato plant did well too!