Recipe: Sun-Dried Tomatoes... Even When The Sun Isn't Shining

With 18 tomato plants in the garden, one needs to get creative. One day I decided to make sun-dried tomatoes... without using the sun.

^Source

Daily Harvest

It was not really on purpose, but somehow I ended up having no less than 18 tomato plants in my garden. Now the gardening season is ending, I have to go out an pick tomatoes every day. Our daily harvest is a lot bigger than the two of us can process... and face it: you can't eat tomato soup or spaghetti sauce every day.

Part of the tomato harvest goes into the freezer instantly. If we want to make a tomato sauce or soup some time during winter, all we need to do is take them out and cook them.

Still, I wanted to use a lot of the fresh ones - they taste so much better than the ones you buy in the store. So I went looking for alternative ways to prepare them.

One of the ideas I came across was to make sun-dried tomatoes. Now, I'm not very fond of the store-bought ones, but I thought I'd just as well give it a try using fresh tomatoes.

And you know what... I simply loved them!

Sun-Drying Tomatoes Without The Sun

Not that I'm an expert on sun-dried tomatoes, but I did expect the sun would have at least something to do with it. Apparently not... you can make them just as well without the sun. You just use the oven instead.

Did you know that the bigger part of the sun-dried tomatoes you buy in the store, was actually dried in the oven??

I thought this whole oven-idea was a bit weird, but convenient. :0)

The Recipe

Below, you'll find an outline of the steps to take to make your own, delicious sun-dried tomatoes.

1 Cut your tomatoes in parts.

Cherry tomatoes can be cut in half, medium tomatoes can be cut in quarters, large tomatoes can be cut in 8 parts.

2 Take out the seeds and the pulp.

3 Taken an oven tray and cover it with a sheet of baking paper.

4 Put your tomato parts on the baking paper, skin down.

5 Cover the tomatoes with some salt.

6 Let them rest for about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, you can create your dressing.

7 Put a little olive oil (or another kind of oil if you don't like the taste of olive oil) in the blender. Add a clove of garlic, some parsley, some thyme, some rosemary and a bit of basil and mix it until you have a smooth oil again.

8 Preheat the oven to 60°C (140°F).

9 Grind some pepper over your salted tomatoes.

10 Pour a little drop of oil over all tomato parts.

11 Put your oven trays in the oven.

Now all you have to do is wait. You can leave the tomatoes in the oven for about 4 to 5 hours. Check the result regularly, because you don't want your tomatoes to dry out completely.

12 Take the tomatoes out of the oven and let them cool off.

13 Add them to jars you can close, and add some extra pepper and salt to each jar.

14 Add a clove of garlic and some extra herbs to each jar.
You can use different herbs for each jar, but be sure to keep the garlic.

15 Now pour oil in the jars until everything in it is covered with the oil.

16 Close the jars and put them in the fridge for about 48 hours.

17 Enjoy!

(If you make a large batch, you can also freeze the jars to preserve the sun-dried tomatoes and enjoy them later)

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Recipe: Sun-Dried Tomatoes... Even When The Sun Isn't Shining

Daily Harvest

Sun-Drying Tomatoes Without The Sun

The Recipe

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