Dried 'matoes

My gardens are dead.
Like me without coffee on Friday morning.

But before they were totally gone forever, I picked my green tomatoes and brought them inside to get them to ripen.  Which they did.  Whoop whoop.

In my last ditch attempt to get the most out of our garden homestead before its inevitable death, I dehydrated the tomatoes so we can savor them all winter long.  I thought this would be a good first instructional post because, well, it is impossible to get this wrong.  Easy.  Cheap.  Yummy.  Totally worth it.

Step one: Cut the tomatoes into 1/4" to 1/2" thick slices.  Don't allow any mold or grossies in there.  Mold will kill the goods.  These are the goods after they have been cut:

Step Two: Dehydrate. As in plug in the dehydrator.  This is a very complicated step, so DON'T SCREW IT UP.

I'm sorry.  I didn't mean to yell. I am just passionate about these tomatoes.

Here is a visual of the goods dehydrating:

Step Three: After they are nice and dry, just peel them off the racks and tuck them into a jar or bag to store them.  I like jars because you can recycle them and use them over again.  For free. Which is always a plus in poordom. -Tip- Our favorite way to use these is to rehydrate them in some warm water and then eat them on grilled sandwiches or cut them up into chunks and sprinkle them in pasta.

Here are the goods, post dehydration:

If you are too cool to do your own dehydrating when you crave a tomato in February just buy one from Safeway! It was drenched in pesticides, picked two months ago, and traveled +1,000 miles to get here from Ecuador, but I'm sure it's still delicious.

I apologize for the sarcasm. Sort of. But those tomatoes are pretty nasty.  We can do better.

Enjoy!

Dried tomatoes

1. Cut the tomatoes into 1/4″ to 1/2″ thick slices.  Don't allow any mold or grossies in there.  Mold will kill the goods.

2. Dehydrate. As in plug in the dehydrator.  This is a very complicated step, so DON'T SCREW IT UP.

3. After they are nice and dry, just peel them off the racks and tuck them into a jar or bag to store them.  I like jars because you can recycle them and use them over again.  For free. Which is always a plus in poordom. -Tip- Our favorite way to use these is to rehydrate them in some warm water and then eat them on grilled sandwiches or cut them up into chunks and sprinkle them in pasta.