Oven-dried tomatoes

With the massive quantities of tomatoes that Sunset farm is selling for $1/lb, it would be a crime not to get enough to dry some. Because sundried tomatoes are awesome. I've oven-dried tomatoes before, and like those other instances, I wasn't totally pleased with this - seemed like just a bit too much work for the product. Anyway, they do taste delicious, and I can't wait to use them in stuff!


I started with 4lbs of tomatoes, which was just enough to fill two sheet pans. I sliced the tomatoes, I think they were closer to 1/2" rather than the 1/4" I was aiming for, and laid them out on the sheet pans and salted them. The salt helps pull out some water. After about half an hour of that, I squeezed out some of the water with a clean dishtowel, and then put them back on the pans, drizzled with some oil and salt, and put in the oven at 200F, for many hours. I should mention, I sucked the juice out of most of the tomatoes - anything you can do to dry them more =).



I checked first after 2 hrs... still pretty fresh-looking. I checked again after 4hrs, and they were a little better. Checked at 6, and they needed more time. By 8 hours they were looking done. I'm not sure I'd leave these drying overnight, even though it did take 8 hours... its worth it to keep checking them. I may have let them go a bit too far, but they have that perfect chewiness to them right now. Now to learn how to store them...