How we have been sun-drying our cherry tomato harvest.
To preserve our tomato harvest I’ve been sun-drying some of our cherry tomatoes.
It’s been a very hot summer over here, so we have been hiding from the sun between noon and 4pm. Our garden has also been suffering in the heat, but our tomatoes have been fantastic. We are producing lots of lovely cherry tomatoes and some larger ones which are also delicious. My husband loves tomatoes. I often catch him picking a couple of tomatoes as he passes them and popping them in his mouth. However we can only eat so many in salads, so I’ve been finding ways to preserve the rest of our harvest.
First of all, I have been making sun-dried cherry tomatoes. This has been very simple, and the end results are delicious! We have been eating them constantly. Either straight out of the jar, in salads or with the local bread and queijo fresco.
As this was a first experiment I didn’t invest too much time or effort in making drying frames. We decided to try the process using only things we had around the house. Now we know how lovely the results are I might invest in proper frames. The results were great anyway, so I might just keep doing it this way. The process has also been helped by the high temperatures here at the moment. I only had to wait 2 days for beautiful sun dried tomatoes.
Making sun-dried cherry tomatoes
To start with I cut the cherry tomatoes in half then laid them on a tray covered with a fine mesh. As I wanted air to circulate underneath I made sure the mesh was taught across the tray. This way I left a gap between the bottom of the mesh and the tray.
After I had laid all the tomatoes on the tray face up, I scattered some salt over them. Then I put another layer of mesh over the top, being careful that it didn’t touch the tomatoes. After that I just had to leave them in the sun for 2 days and wait for the magic! I turned them after one day and kept an eye on them to make sure they didn’t dry too much. The texture I wanted was similar to a raisin and not too dry. So I kept a close eye on them to make sure they didn’t become too hard or burn in the sun.
I am delighted with the end result. We now have sun-dried tomatoes stored in jars filled with local olive oil so we can enjoy them for then next few months.
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