Crispy Oven-Dried Tomatoes
Posted by Sandy Smith on Just Baking.
This summer was the first summer in perhaps 10 years that I put a garden in. The kids were enthusiastic and did their share of weed pulling and harvesting without complaint. It wasn’t an ambitious plot by any stretch — just a few tomato, eggplant, bean, and pepper plants; a handful of radishes; a few herbs; and one ridiculously productive grape tomato plant.
This St. Nicholas grape tomato plant produced pint after pint of the most delicious grape tomatoes I’ve ever eaten. Even now, at the end of the growing season, it still has a few forlorn yellow blossoms clinging stubbornly to it.
But such a tremendous volume of these little gems turned 
out to be an embarrassment of riches. There are just so many grape tomatoes you can eat on a salad every day, and none of my friends apparently like tomatoes. My parents and in-laws were growing their own, and even our poor guinea pig was growing tired of the single-source vitamin C booster. I tried roasting them, but they fell apart into a soupy mess with an admittedly creepy texture that no one would eat. And then I hit on the idea of turning the oven down and drying the tomatoes instead of roasting them. Success!
Drying the tomatoes and garlic slices instead of roasting them works magic. They become crispy, tangy little morsels that are every bit as addictive as potato chips. Seriously! My kids will happily tear through a pint at a time, if I don’t polish off the batch as they’re cooling on the baking sheet first.
Try them plain as a snack, or toss a few into a salad, with pasta, or in anything that you’d use sun-dried tomatoes for. Next year, I may just plant two of these prolific plants!
Oven-Dried Grape or Cherry Tomatoes
- 1 pint grape or cherry tomatoes*
- Olive oil for drizzling
- 1 teaspoon coarse salt (kosher salt works well)
- Freshly ground black pepper
- 3 cloves fresh garlic, sliced
- 1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary, crumbled (or 1 teaspoon fresh, chopped)
- Preheat oven to 225 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and spray with nonstick cooking spray.
- Wash and spin-dry tomatoes. Pick over and remove any that are blemished or moldy.
- Cut tomatoes in half and place in a nonreactive mixing bowl. Drizzle tomatoes with olive oil. Sprinkle with salt, pepper to taste, sliced garlic, and rosemary. Toss to coat.
- Pour tomatoes out onto baking sheet and arrange in a single layer. Place sheet in oven and cook at 225 degrees F for about 2 hours. Turn tomatoes with a spatula and return to oven. Check again in about 1 hour. Tomatoes are done when they are dry and crispy. The bigger and thicker tomatoes in the bunch should still be tender and pliable; none should be charred to blackness. Store these in the refrigerator in a tightly sealed container and used within 2 to 3 days.
*Feel free to scale this recipe to accommodate your tomato booty.
