What to do with a lot of tomatoes? Prepare sun-dried tomatoes
If you put sun-dried tomatoes in bags and put them in the freezer, then the preparations will be stored for about a year. Moreover, due to their size, they take up extremely little space.
Recently, it has become very popular to dry tomatoes and season them with aromatic oil with spices and garlic. This snack turns out to be simply incredibly tasty and aromatic. These tomatoes are used to make all kinds of sandwiches and bruschetta, you can add them to pizza and pies, or you can eat them just for a light snack or as an addition to meat dishes. Very unusual and original. Therefore, if you are the owner of a home dehydrator for fruits and vegetables, then be sure to prepare such a snack.
Ingredients:
- - tomatoes - 1 kg,
- - olive oil - 60 ml,
- - garlic - 2 cloves,
- - salt - 0.5 teaspoons,
- - sugar - 0.5 teaspoons,
- - dried crushed oregano - 0.5 teaspoons,
- - a mixture of Italian herbs - 0.5 teaspoons.
Cooking method:
1. Prepare all the necessary ingredients.It is better to use “Slivka” tomatoes or any other small, well-ripened tomatoes. Rinse the tomatoes well, remove the stems.
2. Cut each tomato in half. The pulp can be removed, then the tomatoes will dry a little faster, since there will be less moisture left in them, but my family prefers sun-dried tomatoes with seeds.
3. Place the tomatoes on a drying tray, cut side up. Add a little salt to each half so that they begin to release juice faster. Set the dryer to 50 degrees and gradually increase it to 70 degrees. The entire drying stage will take approximately 12 hours, depending on the number of tomatoes and the power of the dryer.
4. Sun-dried tomatoes will shrink significantly in size. When the tomatoes become dry enough, but do not turn into crackers, you can turn off the dryer.
5. Prepare aromatic oil. Pour olive oil (you can also use sunflower oil) into a saucepan, add sugar, salt, dried oregano and a mixture of Italian herbs. Bring to a boil. At the same time, peel and cut the garlic into thin slices. Place a few slices of garlic at the bottom of a small jar, then a layer of sun-dried tomatoes, then again garlic and again tomatoes.
6. When all layers are ready, pour hot aromatic oil over everything.
7. Sun-dried tomatoes in the dryer are ready. Of course, it takes a lot of time to prepare them, but it's worth it. The tomatoes turned out to be very aromatic, their taste cannot be compared with anything. You can try these tomatoes the very next day, and they can be stored for several weeks in the refrigerator.Storage in the freezer was discussed above.