OVEN DRIED TOMATOS

Poison5119

Once again, I am faced with an overproduction of tomatos and can only eat so many per day. I could eat twice as many as I do, but in my diet, I try for variety. I could give some away, but because my blood, sweat and tears produced my bounty, and I'm on a tight budget, I limit the gifting of all my hard work; if I had my druthers, I'd give most of them away, but I'm not stupid either. So rather than watch them rot on the windowsill while dozens of fruit flies procreate inside them, and I dont' have the patience or supplies for canning, have a handy simple recipe for saving them.

Take a bunch of tomatoes, and lightly cut a shallow X into the skin. Drop them into boiling water for 30 seconds and remove. The skins should slide right off, or at least peel very easily. Core the stem out, and cut in half, then cut into wedges. Remove all the seeds and other fibrous parts you don't want and drop the flesh into a collander. Drain as much of the fluid as possible by pressing the flesh gently down into the collander. Slice into strips. Lightly coat cookie sheets with olive oil. Lay the strips on these sheets in a single layer and put into an oven at about 140 to 200 degrees; some ovens are hotter than others, so use your best judgement. You don't want to COOK the tomatoes, you want to DEHYDRATE them. This process, depending on the heat provided, can take up to 7 hours. The lower the heat used, the longer the time needed. You can check on them and toss them, distributing the olive oil a little bit. This imparts nice flavor.

As an alternate method, depending on your tastes, you can also just slice the entire tomato and leave everything intact; fiber and seeds included. I don't like them, and my method removes a lot of the excess moisture prior to drying.

Some people take their finished product and stuff them into a jar and fill the balance with olive oil and let them soak in the refrigerator for a week. The resulting oil is good in cooking, or used as a dip for italian bread as an appetizer. Note that chilled olive oil will cloud up - this is normal.

I use my finished product by storing in a bag in the freezer. Then when I'm ready to make spaghetti sauce, I break up a handful and toss them in and let them reconstitute. The result is a more intensely flavored sauce. I usually make my sauce using a commercial sauce, adding a can of crushed tomatos from the shelf, olives, peppers, onions, and mushrooms. Sun dried tomatos also make a nice snack. The ultimate reason for this task is that store bought sundried tomatoes are super-expensive, and this is just one luxury I like to indulge in that the supermarkets can't nail me for!

mnichol

great idea!!!!

thanks!!! :drinker:

Phoenix_Rising

Super cool post, Russia.
I'm always highly impressed with anyone who
a) grows their own veggies
b) can make those veggies last!!