More Things To Do With a Bumper Crop of Tomatoes

The 2018 crop of heirloom tomatoes are still coming in.  Numerous varieties.  Some big and fat.  Some little. Some deep, blood-red, some yellow, some orange and some almost black.  I have fun growing them.  Lately, however, when I bring yet another bucket full into the house, Tricia almost groans.

We've canned forty-something pints of diced tomatoes and about the same amount of tomato sauce. 

Tricia makes an Italian tomato salad that she likes and we've made numerous batches of pico de gallo.

Today we'll be drying some tomatoes in the food dehydrator.  It is a simple thing to do.  You simply core out the tomatoes and cut them into quarters and align them on the dehydrator trays.  I pack them in pretty tight.  They will shrink up.

You want to get them close together to make the most of the space that you have.

I'll liberally shake kosher salt over the tomatoes and then I went outside and picked a whole bunch of rosemary.  I skinned the needles off of the rosemary and sprinkled lots of it on top of the cut up tomatoes.

Once I have all the trays prepared and ready, it is time to get them dehydrating.

It takes only about a day for the tomatoes to be dried.  All of the water has been removed and it leaves behind a concentrated flavor of tomatoes, salt and rosemary that is like candy to eat!

We've made several batches.  Once totally dried, we store in mason jars and zip loc bags and snack on them.  I'm not a big fan of raw tomatoes, but dried tomatoes are quite good.

We have a few jars of dried seasoned, herbed tomatoes put aside and many more on the way!

The smaller tomatoes actually make the best dried tomatoes.