Creating and Canning Sundried Tomatoes

Palisade Posh Sundried Tomatoes

One of the things we have been experimenting with this growing season is using Andy’s dehydrator. Bella has taken the lead on this endeavor, first dehydrating peaches and then moving onto tomatoes. It takes between six to ten hours to completely dry out tomatoes. This year I grew three varieties of heirloom tomatoes, Black Strawberry, White Currant and Black Krim. The latter are the largest of the three, with the Strawberry being a medium size tomato and the White Currant being a smaller version of the standard cherry tomato.

I chose the Black Strawberry tomato to use for our ‘sundried tomato’ experiment. We cut them in half, lined the dehydrator with parchment paper and set the timer. About halfway through, Bella checked their status of dehydration and flipped them. Once completely free of moisture, the tomatoes are ready for canning. I researched a few recipes, but nothing really caught my interest, so I decided to take the knowledge I’d gathered and just go for it.

First, I sterilized the jars and lids. Next, I gathered my fresh herbs from the garden choosing Basil, Thyme and Oregano. I washed and chopped the herbs and placed them at the bottom of the jar. Next, I packed in the dried tomatoes and filled the jar with olive oil, sealed the lid tight and added my Palisade Posh label. In one of the recipes, I viewed they also used garlic, but a few years back Andy tried to make garlic oil that went south so I was a little leery of adding garlic. The last thing I want to do is give us all botulism! 

I let the flavors merge for about a week and then used the tomatoes on a Mediterranean pizza! The tomatoes were flavorful and a little chewy, but I couldn’t really taste the herbs. So, my next experiment will be to use dried herbs and mix them in with the tomatoes first so they are evenly dispersed throughout the jar.  This means Bella and I will be experimenting with drying the herbs in the dehydrator before I try making sundried tomatoes 2.0. I also want to experiment with drying the Black Krim and White Currant tomatoes. I’m curious to see if there if one tomato that lends itself to more successful drying, for example will the bigger tomato, because of its size, be better because there is more meat in the tomato, so to speak. The White Currant tomato has a high sugar content, I wonder how that will be affected when it is dried, will it still retain its sweetness, I wonder.

These culinary experiments make me want to create a test kitchen of sorts on the property! But I will save that idea for a future blog post… for now we will continue experimenting with the dehydrator and creating the perfect jar of flavorful sundried tomatoes!