A couple of years ago when our summer garden was brimming with tomatoes about to turn red I acted on an impulse and bought a food dehydrator that had been collecting dust in my online Amazon cart. When it arrived it was large and bulky and when I put the sliced tomatoes in their little trays, it was pretty loud too. Nevertheless, I was thrilled to have a way to dehydrate tomatoes. I placed it on my kitchen counter and after about 18-24 hours they were finally "done". Or maybe I was just totally sick of listening to the steady whir of the dehydrator all day. After taking out each shriveled tomato, I just stared at all of the drying racks and realized that I was going to have to clean them all. Wha?? But I didn't because I was too lazy. At last I had made sun dried tomatoes and could cross that off my bucket list.

Long story short: I don't own a food dehydrator anymore. After two years of owning one and literally less than five times of using it I decided that I'm over it. Instead I use my oven. Now there is lots of argument against using your oven as a food dehydrator because of all of the possible nutrient loss. But after considering that most of the foods that I could possibly be interested in dehydrating before consuming, such as kale chips or crispy (not leathery) apple slices, would be brought up to high heat being baked in the oven anyway to achieve the crispy result that I am after. So I think that the consequences are negligible.

Another word on sun-dried tomatoes- they are AMAZING in hummus. Since making my hummus with these, I can never go back to plain hummus again. And have you ever looked up the price of sun-dried tomatoes online? Yikes! These literally cost pennies to make. The very best type of tomato to use for these is the Roma because of its lack of water content. They really turn out far better than any other tomato that I have tried AND they are very cheap and easily attainable. 

Sun Dried Tomatoes (oven-dried)

2-3 lbs Roma tomatoes

sea salt

Wash tomatoes thoroughly. Slice tomatoes into uniform thickness so that they dry evenly. Lay them on baking racks with either parchment paper or silicon baking sheets (very important!!) so that they are not touching each other. Sprinkle with salt. Set your oven on the lowest possible setting. Let them dehydrate for about 8-10 hours.

*I always dehydrate them overnight. During the summer I keep the windows open during the night and the temperature difference doesn't really heat my house up very much. Never enough to kick on the A/C, at least. 

In the morning, turn off oven and remove. Immediately start peeling them off so that they don't stick. Store in Ziplock bags and store in the freezer. I have used tomatoes that were a year old stored in my freezer and they still tasted fine!