Guest Post - Homemade Sun Dried Tomatoes
7:11 PMToday 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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