Delicious Dried Tomatoes - How to Make Your Own

Dry Your Tomato Harvest to Enjoy Gourmet Dried Tomatoes All Winter Long

If you have a bumper crop of tomatoes in your garden, you can preserve them by drying and enjoy delicious gourmet eating all winter long. Dried tomatoes are tasty additions to fresh pasta, sauces, sandwiches, salads, stir fry dishes and you can also enjoy them just the way they are, as a chewy tangy-sweet snack.

Fresh tomatoes from the garden are almost everyone's favorite summer produce. Dried tomatoes are, for me, even better - their concentrated tomato goodness makes waiting for next season's fresh crop easier during the long winter months.

You can make dried tomatoes in a commercial dehydrator or you can dry them in your oven or in the sun. This lens explains how I make and store oven dried tomatoes at home with ordinary kitchen equipment.

Easy Oven-Dried Tomatoes

Step by step recipe for making your own gourmet dried tomatoes at home

The basic recipe for making your own dried tomatoes is easy. The most difficult part of the entire process is having patience. It can take up to 12 hours to dry each batch of tomatoes in a regular oven, but the wait is worth every minute of oven-watching.

The Best Tomatoes for Drying are Firm Ripe Plum Tomatoes

Plum tomatoes have very little watery juice, so they are the best choice for making dried tomatoes.Plum tomatoes (sometimes called paste tomatoes) have thick fleshy skins and and plenty of sweet pulp with small seeds. I don't remove the seeds from my tomatoes before drying although some recipes recommend this. I like to preserve every delicious bit of nutrition from my home grown tomatoes when I make dried tomatoes.

A whole oven's worth of dried tomatoes takes about 4 dozen medium to large ripe plum tomatoes. You can dry fewer tomatoes of course, but I like to maximize my oven energy for every batch.

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What You Need to Dry Tomatoes

A Whole Oven Batch of Dried Tomatoes

48 Firm, Ripe Plum Tomatoes, washed
Cooling racks (I use cake/cookie racks) with narrow tines that won't let tomatoes slip through
Sea salt, or Kosher salt
12 hours of your time - good food takes time

Note: Larger, juicier tomatoes may require more than 12 hours to dry. If so, simply extend the cooking time until your tomatoes are dried to leathery consistency.

Rodale's Guide to Food Preservation

How to can, dry, preserve and freeze foods at home

Features all your grandmother's techniques for putting food by, plus updated methodis using the microwave, the freezer and more.

Preserving Summer's Bounty: A Quick and Easy Guide to Freezing, Canning, and Preserving, and Drying What You Grow

by: Rodale Food Center

Amazon Price: $12.89 (as of 07/13/2009)
List Price: $18.95
Used Price: $9.69

Average 5-star rating by customers who purchased this book. Reviewers praise it's simplicity and comprehensive coverage "from soup to nuts".

Usually ships in 24 hours

How to Dry Tomatoes in Your Home Oven

Preheat oven to 200 degrees Fahrenheit.
Arrange oven racks to allow air flow top and bottom. I use 4 cooling racks, 2 on each oven rack.
Slice tomatoes in half lengthwise and arrange skin side down on the cooling racks side by side, not touching. I arrange mine crosswise to the wires on the cooling racks so they won't slip through between the wires as they dry and shrink.
Sprinkle lightly with sea salt or Kosher salt.
Arrange tomato-filled racks on oven racks, and start timing.
After 2 hours, start checking tomatoes for dryness. Remove tomatoes as they dry.
Cool on paper plates or towels, then transfer to storage containers.

Tomato Drying Tips

Don't dry tomatoes until they turn crisp, and don't expect them to turn brown.

Tomatoes should be flexible, leathery-dry and not wet when they're done drying.

How Long to Dry the Tomatoes

How to tell when the tomatoes are "done"

Drying tomatoes takes time, but you don't need to stand over the stove or keep close watch for hours. They'll dry slowly and won't even need to be checked for dryness for a couple hours after you begin a batch.

I like to dry tomatoes on a not too hot late summer or early fall day when I am home all day long. It can take up to 12 hours to dry a larger, juicier tomato. Smaller, meatier tomatoes may dry in as few as 9 hours.

Tomatoes should be flexible, leathery-dry and not wet when they're done drying. They'll be supple but won't feel "squishy" to the touch.

Tomatoes shrink in size and get slightly darker as they dry, much like the way grapes do when they become raisins; the pulp will feel firm but flexible when they're done.

Food Saver Storage System

FoodSaver V2840 Advanced Design Vacuum Food Sealer

Amazon Price: (as of 07/13/2009)
List Price:

Vacuums, seals, and shuts off automatically - 2 vacuum speeds
CrushFree Instant Seal; extra-wide nonstick sealing strip
Space-saving design
Stainless-steel lid; dishwasher-safe antibacterial drip tray

Storing Oven Dried Tomatoes

Dried Tomatoes Will Keep Fresh for Months

Store dried, cooled tomatoes in plastic bags, clean jars or other air-tight containers.

I like to store dry tomatoes in the refrigerator in plastic bags to ensure longer shelf life and to preserve color, but you should be able to keep well-dried tomatoes in any dust-proof container at room temperature for several months.

Food Dehydrator - Jerky Maker

Excalibur 2900 Economy Series 9 Tray Food Dehydrator - Black

Amazon Price: $179.95 (as of 07/13/2009)
List Price: $199.00
Used Price:

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Tomato Recipes Plexo - Build a Tomato Recipe Cookbook

All tomato recipe links and lenses welcome to add to this list

Add your favorite tomato recipe link, or vote for the best tomato recipe in this plexo list. Fresh tomato recipes, tomato sauce recipes OR dried tomato recipes welcome!

1

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Dried Tomato Savory Sauce

Dried Tomato Sauce - similar to pesto, yummy!0 points

Small Batch Home Food Dryer

Nesco American Harvest FD-1010 Gardenmaster Food Dehydrator

Amazon Price: $119.37 (as of 07/13/2009)
List Price: $149.99

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Tomato Cooking Features on the Blog Circuit

Spicy Sun-Dried Tomato Hummus « Voila!: Plain hummus is good, but when you start adding ingredients like roasted garlic or roasted red pepper or sun dried tomatoes, then you can really get creative. The simple and necessary ingredients of hummus ? chickpeas, garlic, ...
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Afternoon Snack: Eggplant Sun-Dried Tomato Spread: Vitamin G ...: Glamour magazine: fashion, beauty, health, sex advice, news: glamour.com.
Tagliatelle with Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto & Mascarpone | Toasted Special: I'm hopelessly addicted to Italian Foodies' sun-dried tomato pesto recipe. I've been making it pretty regularly of late, and for the first time today I found I had some left over. Shocking, I know. Happily, I also had some leftover ...

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The BIG Squidoo Tomato Lens List

Please, only Squidoo tomato-related lenses.

Add your favorite Squidoo tomato lens to this voting list - any and all tomato lenses welcome, EXCEPT recipe lenses (they have their own plexo elsewhere in this lens - add 'em to that list please). If your lens or one you love is about tomato information, how to grow tomatoes, tomato lore, tomato nutrition, tomato jokes, tomato stories ... anything at all about tomatoes except tomato recipes ... add them to this list. If you have favorite tomato recipe lenses and tomato recipe links, please add them to the Tomato Recipes plexo list!

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Totally Terrific Tomato Recipes

Totally Terrific Tomato - Recipes and Growing Guid more...0 points

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How many different ways do we have of eating or co more...0 points

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Different ways to enjoy your salad0 points

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Garden Fresh Tomato Recipes

I love growing tomatoes. They are one of the easie more...0 points

I Love Organic Gardening

Lensmaster Pastiche, aka Lee Hansen, has been a member since August 12 2007, has rated 1,062 lenses, favorited 446, and has created 103 lenses from scratch. Lee Hansen donates their royalties to Squidoo Charity Fund, Room to Read, and Fund for Peace. This member's top-ranked page is "Clip Art Borders & Frames". See all my lenses

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Tomato Foodies Fan Club - Guestbook

Have you ever dried tomatoes or other vegetables?

What's your favorite way to use dried tomatoes in recipes?

Do you like to eat leathery dried tomatoes as a snack, use them in pasta dishes, or salads, or do you add them to oils to make interesting condiments?

Do you season your tomatoes with herbs before drying?

Say hello, and please rate this lens with the stars at the top of the page if you have a minute.

If you have a favorite tomato recipe lens or link be sure to add it to the recipes plexo. If you have a lens on Squidoo about tomatoes that's NOT recipes, add it to the Tomato Plexo list!

Lensmaster

sandyspider wrote...

Excellent lens. This will go good with my Garden Fresh Tomato Recipes lens. I will lensroll this. I never tried dried tomatoes. Good idea.

Posted July 09, 2009