Sun-dried tomatoes is something I have used often, but now that I have a dehydrator, what happens if I dry my own tomatoes? I sliced up a tomato into about 5 mm thick slices and put them on the dehydrator tray. By the way, that odd looking knife is my ceramic knife, very sharp, perfect for tomatoes and the like.
The tomatoes went in on 57 degrees Celsius for 10 hours. When I got them out, they were, well, dry. They had of course lost quite a bit of size, but even though the smaller bits had sort of curled up and become curly blobs, the larger slices still had a nice "slicy" shape to them.
They were not entirely dry and brittle like potato chips, but rather had the feel of very thin leather. and was a bit chewy. I do not know if they will go brittle if left long enough, but that should be possible to find out. I have read in Modernist Cuisine that if you infuse them with starch first, by letting them soak in a slurry with potato starch for instance, and then place them in a chamber vacuum machine which will make sure that the starch is forced into the cells of the tomatoes before drying, you can fry them in oil after drying to get crisp tomato chips. I do not have a chamber machine, but I may experiment by putting them in a spuma bottle and charge that with gas to get the starch soaked slices under pressure. That might work.
The slices tasted very nice indeed. Sun-dried tomatoes often have a taste that is a bit different from fresh tomatoes, more of a cooked flavour. These tasted of fresh tomatoes, but very concentrated fresh tomatoes. They also kept a more vibrant red colour that you normally find in sun-dried tomatoes which tend to go brown.
So what can I use these for? I am thinking pizza topping. Perhaps I should make pizza this weekend?
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