Yesterday, I oven-dried a bunch of grape tomatoes. I’d love to tell you they came from my own garden, but my garden got incredibly neglected this summer and produced very little. These were given to me by someone, and I thought I’d try sun drying them. When I read about sun drying, I wasn’t sure I wanted to leave my tomatoes outside for several days. So I opted to oven dry them instead. Look at those sweet, flavorful tomatoes at the left. They’re ready for adding to salads and pizzas, or for putting into a variety of recipes.
Oven drying is so easy, and the results are amazing. You can see the specific instructions for doing it along with storage tips and recipes to use the tomatoes in on my Mother Nature Network blog. Basically you cut the tomatoes in half, sprinkle them with salt, and put in a very low oven until most of the moisture has been drawn out of them. Mine took four hours to do, but it can take longer depending on the size of your tomatoes.
Have you ever oven dried or sun dried tomatoes? What were your results and what’s the best way to use them up once you have them?
I’ve dried my plum/small (don’t remember the name) tomatoes for the last few years & it’s always awesome. We use a borrowed dehydrator that eventually died (it was old) and just bought a new, fancy-schmancy one (an Excalibur). Anyway, we dry then freeze our tomatoes and they always seem to last exactly for one year, then we make more – it’s perfect. We use them on pizza, pasta, frittatas & give some as gifts. this year I want to throw some in jars of oil and give them out for Christmas (they’d have to be refrigerated though). Love them!
If you click through to the Mother Nature Network link, you’ll find several ways of storing them. When I was researching how to store them, I kept reading that if you were going to store the tomatoes in olive oil in a jar, you needed to sterilize the jar first, even if you were keeping it in the refrigerator. I’m not exactly sure how long it will keep this way. You might want to do some of your own research on the best way to store them in olive oil. I’d hate for your Christmas gifts to get spoiled.