Guest Post - Homemade Sun Dried Tomatoes

7:11 PM

Today I am sharing with you a guest post by one of my very, very dear friends, Katie. She comes from a long line of wonderful hostesses so anything she says about food and or entertaining - listen up!

I haven't tried this recipe for Homemade Sun Dried Tomatoes, but definitely will be soon.

Enjoy!

 
 
Make Your Own Sun-Dried Tomatoes

I use sun-dried tomatoes a lot, but a little jar is super expensive.  Since my garden is currently exploding with tomatoes, I figured it was the perfect time to attempt making my own!  I researched several different recipes and combined my reading into this experiment:

I used Roma tomatoes because they have fewer seeds and a thinner skin.  I cut up 15 tomatoes and ended up with about 1 cup of the finished product.

Wash and dry tomatoes.
Cut tomatoes into quarters, removing tough bits, any blemishes, and the majority of the seeds.
Lay out the quarters.  The best way to do this is to lay out the quarters on a cake screen, but I don't have one, so cookies sheets worked just fine.  I ended up needing to just rotate these babies twice.
Put the pans into the oven at 200 degrees.  All the guidelines I read said to expect the process to take 6-10 hours, but mine were done in just over 4.  It's probably because my home-grown tomatoes are smaller and less water-logged than the pumped-up grocery store version.  You'll just have to judge the time based on tomato size and water content.  After 2 hours I flipped the tomatoes and rotated the trays both up and down and around in the oven so they were heated evenly.  I flipped and stirred everything again at about 3 hours.

When I checked them at 4 hours they were all shriveled up and perfectly "sun-dried". Yum!  I stirred them all into a bowl with 4 minced garlic cloves and lots of EVOO.  I packed them in Tupperware and filled all the space with oil so no air was sealed in.  That package should be good in the fridge for several weeks.  Just remember that once you open them and expose them to air, you'll need to eat the remainder within about two weeks.

Another option I read about but didn't try (maybe the next round of exploding garden tomatoes) is to just seal the finished product in an airless plastic bag and freeze them -- they would be good for several months.

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