Grow Your Own Magazine

I purposely grew a lot of plum tomatoes this year so I could dry them. It's a good way of storing them and I enjoy the intensified taste they give.
Up to now I've been drying them in the oven and storing them in jars of olive oil. Whilst they are ok and very flavoursome they are a wee bit chewy!
I asumed that the olive oil would soften them a bit but his is not the case.

Can I put them into brine and will this re-hydrate them a bit and make them less chewy? If so, how much salt to how much water and is a cold solution just poured over them?

At present, I've just dried a batch and I am just eating them as they are! I wondered how long they will keep once dried and how do I store them dry?

I could invest in a book which will supply me with this information (PRESERVED is on my Crimbo list!) but I know there are plenty of knowledgeable grapes on here who can enlighten me for the time being!

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My Majesty made for him a garden anew in order
to present to him vegetables and all beautiful flowers.- Offerings of Thutmose III to Amon-Ra (1500 BCE)

Couldn't say Snadger, except that the ones you buy preserved in oil are chewy too. They're obviously meant to be like that. I like them chopped in a bread dough. Tomato bread is ace.

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Some days you're the statue, some days you're the pigeon!

vegheaven.blogspot.com Updated July 6th 2008

But there's chewy and there's CHEWWWWWY Flum! Mine are bit more chewy than the ones you buy but I suppose it could take a while for them to absorb the oil!

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My Majesty made for him a garden anew in order
to present to him vegetables and all beautiful flowers.- Offerings of Thutmose III to Amon-Ra (1500 BCE)

Maybe they were dried slightly longer than the commercial ones. Could be a trial and error thing. PW dries his toms - where is he when you need him? If we said something rude he'd soon turn up!

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Some days you're the statue, some days you're the pigeon!

vegheaven.blogspot.com Updated July 6th 2008

Wellie dries them in the oven and stores in oil - they are DIVINE - and yes, Flum, sundried tomato bread is the bees nuts!

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Hazel
www.hazelandjanesallotment.blogspot.com
update Thu 03/07/2008...planning ahead...

Sure is - the muts knees even!

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Some days you're the statue, some days you're the pigeon!

vegheaven.blogspot.com Updated July 6th 2008

NIgella does Moon blush tomatoes:
Pre heat oven to 200 C
500g Toms sat cut side up in an oven proof dish sprinkle with 1tsp salt, 1/4 tsp sugar, 1tsp thyme and 30ml olive oil, place in oven and immediatly turn oven off leave overnight without opening the door. She claims they are "wonderful!"

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Imagination is everything, it is a preview of what is to become.

I'd love to have some to dry. My six plants have yielded about the same amount of tomatoes....

There's always next year.

Sundried toms in any pasta sauce adds something special to the taste.

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A simple dude trying to grow veg.

http://haywayne.blogspot.com/ - UPDATED - 11th June

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You got more than me this year, Wayne. The few I did get didn't taste quite right either. As you said, roll on next year.

I knew I would have too many to eat and I don't particularily like fresh tomatoes, so I did a tomato trial in two of my ramshackle greenhouses. What I found from my nine tomato types trial was:-

Roma plum tomatoes are great for drying but very late in maturing (still maturing now!)
Orange Banana toms are heavy croppers, late maturing and good for drying!
Old faithful, Gardeners delight are just that, but only eaten freshly off the bush...still on the go at mo!
Beafsteak toms including Marmande and Ponderosa pink were a waste of time.
Hartzfeur were very productive but a bit tasteless...useless for drying
A little yellow tomato called Ildi was very late but are also very nice just eaten from the vine!
I grew a couple of other varieties as well but the mere fact that I can't recall there names is in itself testament to how crap they were!

For drying it has to be the plum type!

__________________
My Majesty made for him a garden anew in order
to present to him vegetables and all beautiful flowers.- Offerings of Thutmose III to Amon-Ra (1500 BCE)