06 September 2012

Tomates séchées au four

That's oven-dried tomatoes. Yesterday, I chose seven nice tomatoes from the garden.
Here they are.


Remove the stems and cut each tomatoes into just four wedges. Arrange them on a pan so that they are not touching each other.


Set the pan in the oven pre-heated to 90ºC / 200ºF. Leave it there for eight hours. Turn the oven off and let the tomatoes cool down and continue drying for another few hours (overnight). Here's what you get.


Advantages: the tomato flavor is really concentrated, and slightly caramelized. The dried tomatoes can be stored in a sterilized jar over the winter. They don't take up much space.

I should have done seven more tomatoes. Maybe this weekend.

6 comments:

  1. I generally do them at nearly twice the temp for under half the time (160C for 3h). We eat them so quickly I don't have to worry about their storage. Dashed useful and great for cheap supermarket toms in the winter.

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  2. Hi Susan, I thought the principle in drying tomatoes was to prevent them from going above 100ºC, to keep the liquid in them from boiling. They're not cooked but dried.

    Making tomates confites is different, because confit means "slow-cooked" — not just dried. Both ways are good, but I don't think you can keep tomates confites for a long time. They need to be used fairly rapidly.

    Anyway, I do both. This time, it was tomates séchées.

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  3. You started with seven, how did you end up with so many more?

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  4. I was never a fan of sun-dried tomatoes. Are yours different? Sun-dried are way too sweet for me. Interested to hear your comments.

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  5. Starman, there were seven tomatoes, each cut into four pieces. Four times seven is 28.

    Cheryl, on ne discûte pas des goûts et des couleurs !

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