Van-Dried Tomatoes

Tomatoes. They're almost as plentiful as zucchini, except, as far as I can tell, they're much more versatile and end up being much more valuable. They can go on sandwiches, in salads, canned whole or crushed, made into sauce, frozen, processed into an endless array of condiments, the list goes on. For the most part we eat what we can fresh, and turn the rest into tomato sauce for pizza and soup later in the year. We also always grow a couple of varieties of tomatoes, big hearty ones for slicing that break down well in sauce (this year it was Hungarian Heart) and smaller cherry varieties for snacking. In the past we've grown Black Cherries, but this year they did very poorly. Fortunately, when we bought seed from Baker Creek, they sent us a free pack of Black Vernissage, while not a cherry tomato per se, they are on the smaller side and the smaller ones could pass as a cherry.

Making sauce, while enjoyable the first four quarts, can become something of a burden, and lets be serious, no one is really salivating when it comes time to crack open a jar of sauce. It's an excellent addition to a dish, but you can't snack on it by itself; that said, we do try to make healthy garden “treats,” and cherry tomatoes provide an excellent treat with a little work. I saw @papa-pepper post the other day about dehydrating tomato slices (if you don't follow him, do so now) and it prompted me to share this little tid-bit about how we make sun-dried tomatoes.

I'm not really sure they actually qualify as sun-dried tomatoes, or solar oven tomatoes, or maybe they're just the poor man's tomatoes, I don't know, and it doesn't really matter. They're delicious. For this treat, we use cherry tomatoes, typically with smaller cherry tomatoes, you don't need to slice them, but since we were using the Black Vernissage we cut them either in half or in quarters depending on the size of the tomato before we tossed them in some spices. For us we toss them in salt, pepper, garlic, cocoa powder, cayenne and olive oil. Once they're good and coated, I lay them out on dehydrating trays. Since these were a little wet with juice, I started with the solid inserts so the juice wouldn't leak through. Once the tomatoes were laid out on the tray so as to not touch and allow air to move through, I put them in my van.

Yes, you read that right. In the summer, my van works as the ideal solar oven. I put the trays on the dashboard and let the sun do the work. If you have vents (like I do in my man-van) you can crack them, or you can just crack the windows a little, but you do need a bit of air flow. After the first day, when most of the dripping juice has dissipated, I'll move the tomatoes to the screen insert on the dehydrating trays.

It's important not to stack the trays and to make sure they are laid out in the sun, as this helps to keep them from molding. It's also important not to leave them in the car for too long as they can actually burn and then they taste like garbage. These tomatoes make an excellent snack or addition to summer salads or anything else you'd use sun-dried tomatoes for, and it helps make your car smell garden fresh!

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