When tomatoes are coming in fast and furious from the garden or at the market, put some of those ultra-ripe tomatoes to excellent use by drying them in the oven. The low-temperature roasting dried them out a bit, intensifying their flavor beautifully. Serve them on their own sprinkled with salt, with pasta, or in other dishes suitable for "sun-dried tomatoes."
Note: Feel free to oven-dry more tomatoes than the recipe calls for, just make sure you have extra pans to spread them out on – the "drying" process works best when each tomato piece has a bit of space around it.
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 1 hour
Total Time: 1 hour, 15 minutes
Yield: About 2 cups
Ingredients:
- 2 lbs. tomatoes
- 2 Tbsp. olive oil
Preparation:
- Preheat oven to 300°F. Rinse tomatoes and dry them thoroughly.
- Hull or remove the core of each tomato. Cut small tomatoes into quarters and larger tomatoes into large bite-size pieces. Remove and discard seed and any juice.
- Spread cut tomatoes on a large baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil. Toss tomato pieces gently to coat them in the oil. Spread the pieces out as much as possible on the baking sheet.
- Put tomatoes in oven and cook until edges curl up and tomatoes reduce in size by about 1/3, 60 to 90 minutes depending on how juicy the tomatoes were to start with.
