I mentioned how to make oven-dried tomatoes in a previous post, but I thought since I would continue to reference them it would be easier to do a seperate post on them. So here it is...these are delicious, chewy little bites just packed with flavor. We love using them on pizza, in pasta, in quesadillas, etc.
Just chop up some cherry or grape tomatoes into fairly uniform sizes, drizzle them with olive oil, and sprinkle with kosher salt. Bake in a 250 degree oven for several hours, until tomatoes are shriveled and somewhat leathery when you rip them apart. They should look something like this:
Just watch them closely for the last little while, as they go from perfect to burnt somewhat quickly. If you need to, you can take the pan out and remove the ones that are done to let the rest cook a bit longer.
I tried making these with roma tomatoes because they are much cheaper but...MAJOR baking fail. They turned into black little crispie things. I still put them on my pizza, but next time I'll try the grape tomatoes. I'm still figuring out why it didn't work as well, but I think it was the proportion of thick skin to small amounts of liquid inside that made them such a disaster.
ReplyDeleteHmm, interesting. I've actually been wanting to try the same thing. I'll have to do some experiments and see if there is a way to make those work, because I hate handing over the $3 for a pint of grape tomatoes, too!
ReplyDeleteOne suggestion: If you put the tomatoes in the oven to bake, then have to go to class before they are quite done, so decide to turn the oven off and just leave them in the warm, dry oven for the next three hours to finish drying out, be sure you remember they are in there before you start heating the oven to 500 while you put the toppings on the pizza. Just a tip.
ReplyDeleteYou're lucky it's only $3. I was happy to find them on sale for $5. I think some really juicy vine tomatoes would work as well - they're not quite as cheap as romas, but less than cherry tomatoes.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how these compare with sun-dried tomatoes...
I made these yesterday with roma tomatoes. I looked up some things online and discovered that cutting them in half and scooping out the seeds and core is a good way to prepare them, rather than dicing them. I used that method, but at 250 degrees they took 5+ hours to get to where I wanted them! A lot of recipes I saw online actually roasted them around 400 degrees for under an hour. I'm going to try a higher temp next time and see what the difference is. Anyway, they turned out well with the romas. I just chopped them up after they were dried.
ReplyDelete