Have you ever grown or seen Juliet tomatoes at the market. They’re kind of like a mini roma tomato and while they are too small for me to bother peeling and canning whole they are just the right size to dry. There are lots of methods for drying tomatoes including the age-old sun-dried variety. A few years ago I picked up an excalibur dehydrator on craigslist and that is what we use for all of our drying.
I’ve been drying the juliets from our garden all summer as they’ve ripened but I also ordered a half-bushel from the farm for an all out, run the dehydrator non-stop for a week, drying bonanza. Next year I should really try to get a quarter bushel at a time. We cut each tomato in half and toss them on the dehydrator tray. They should be arranged cut side up but honestly, there are just too many of them for me to worry about it.
They shrivel down to a pretty small size, nickel or quarter sized I’d say, so I usually use more than a recipe calls for. Most often I rehydrate them in some hot, even boiling, water before adding them to a dish but this year I want to experiment with grinding them up into a powder and adding it to sauce and soups. The flavor is so intensely tomato. We store them in a couple of vacuum-sealed canisters and I keep a small jar of them in the kitchen pantry.
Putting By 
6512 and growing said
I’ve been drying our sun gold cherry tomatoes outside (thank you Southwestern sun) and they are like tomato licorice, like tomato candy, like heaven.
adalynfarm said
Do you run them thru the deep freeze to kill any lingering ‘bugs’ before putting them on the shelf?
Mama Urchin said
I don’t put them through the freezer, I dry them at 140′ and I dry them until they are totally dry, not pliable at all. I suppose I should put them through the deep freezer but I haven’t ever had a problem with them so far. That said, I think I might go ahead and freeze the ones I did this year just in case.
Orange Marmalade « Putting By said
[…] there! So yeah, last time we talked I was drying tomatoes. Not too long after that I canned two bushels of apples as applesauce, half chunky, half smooth. […]
JJ said
I found I just couldn’t get them all the way dry. Even cut in quarters so into the freezer they went! Very satisfying. I had them at 135 for what seemed like forever!