Oven dried tomatoes

Think of sun dried tomatoes. When I think of them, I usually think of the stuff in a bag. Very popular in the '90s. Huge, almost too huge, tomato flavor. Texture of leather. Good in pasta, but potentially also bad in pasta, especially when overdone. Expensive. Now take a look at this.

All of the problems with sun dried tomatoes, except maybe the over-exposure in the 90's, are correctable by making them yourself. And, as a pleasant extra, it's disturbingly easy to do. It takes only a little prep time, depending on the type of tomatoes you use, and some time in the oven.

Start with some tomatoes. It doesn't really matter what kind, per se, except that you want good tomatoes. Not the flavorless trash that you find in most supermarkets. Pretend like those don't even exist; I do. No, this is something that you want to do with your bounty of tomatoes from your garden, CSA, or farmer's market. Get something that tastes good.

I'm using these Roma style tomatoes that I got from my local City Market. Next, wash your tomatoes.

Next, prepare them. This involves removing anything that is inedible such as stems or blemishes. If you have anything thicker than, oh, an inch and a half, you'll probably want to cut it down so it's thinner. Cherry tomatoes are probably fine. Roma tomatoes can be cut in half or quarters. Larger tomatoes can be sliced. Put onto a piece of parchment paper on a baking sheet, leaving a 1/4" or so between pieces, and season with salt. Genna in the Test Kitchen suggests letting them rest for a few minutes before baking, which will draw out the liquid early in the process. If you didn't pre-heat your oven, and there was really no reason to do so with this preparation, you could just put them in salted while it's heating up. Bake at 250°F.

There's no set time to cook them; it entirely depends on your volume-to-surface-area ratio and sheer mass of tomatoes, as well as how dry you want them to be. These took 2-2.5 hours. Could be a bit less, could be a few times more. When mine looked like:

I figured they were done. Then I made some spaghetti (dried, not fresh pasta), added some parmesan cheese, olive oil, and these tomatoes to it, and had a fabulous lunch. They had an intense, but not overwhelming, tomato flavor. They were still a bit juicy and not at all like leather. And they had a complex and subtle flavor that made me happy.

For variants, you could add herbs and sprinkle with a bit of sugar, if you're into that sort of thing. You can store in the fridge for a few days or the freezer for a few weeks.

If you think this is great, but you'd much rather do this properly (i.e. in the sun), check out the White on Rice Couple's post on sun drying tomatoes. You may also happen to notice that their photography is much better than mine. It's true, but it would be impolite to point that out in the comments. Just so you know.

Comments

[julieako]

Would love to do this is I had gotten more than TWO tomatoes from my plant this year! I roasted a bunch last year and often just had them as a late night snack!