Portland Foodie

Sun Dried Tomatoes, err, Oven Dried Tomatoes

Though the common name is sun dried tomatoes, I should say oven dried tomatoes...If our summer had been drier and hotter earlier in the season, these babies could have been dried outside...

Now, after 3 weeks of warm weather, I have 1000 tomatoes (ok, that might be an exaggeration, but there is a lot of them). You may remember I was complaining loudly on Gardener to Farmer that I didn't even have ripe tomatoes in August...I called them temperamental and was considering giving up tomato growing altogether.

Yeah.

I now have buckets full of the fabulous fruits and am quickly trying to find innovative ways to store them. I don't need 500 gallons of tomato sauce. So, I thought I would give drying a try, here's what you do:

• Use tomatoes that are generally used for paste, or that are meatier, less water = easier to dry. I grew purple plum tomatoes for paste this year, so I am trying those.
• Choose ripe, but still firm tomatoes for drying
• Clean them and slice in half
• Take a baking rack and place it on a sheet pan (might need two, dependent upon the size of your pan)
• Place the tomatoes cut side down, sprinkle with salt to help with the drying process
• Place in a low temperature oven. My oven actually goes down to 150 degrees, yours might only go down to 200. Use the lowest setting available and see how it goes.
• Keep an eye on them, could take up to 12 hours...could be as few as 8...really depends on quite a few variables, size, heat, humidity...
• They are done when they are dry and leathery...not brittle and not wet.
• I will store mine in vacuum sealed bags, but you can store yours in whatever clean canister you have available

How can you resist these beauties! If you have tomatoes that you would like to use in a sauce, check out this recipe from an earlier post.

Dried and Smoked Peppers

I recently harvested my first, and only, crop of hot peppers (for more on my crop, check out the post at Gardener to Farmer). As you can see, quite a few of them ripened at the same time. I thought about a couple of storage options, like freezing, or canning, but I settled on drying...and while I could have dried them in the oven, I decided to smoke them over indirect heat on my Kettle Grill.

I put it on a low, indirect heat...wasn't over 250 at its hottest. Then, I had to replenish it once. All in all, the peppers were on there for maybe three hours. It is important to keep the vent relatively closed in order to control temperature and capture the smoke.

And when I was finished, I had some gorgeous peppers...smokey, yummy and preserved for future use. I think I will grind some of them and use it in recipes...others I might save an reconstitute this winter, or add a couple of whole peppers to a chili recipe.

Have you smoked any of your garden harvests this year? Let me know how it worked...