It's time for recipe of the day.Some of the best recipes that I've created over the years have come about because I was just trying something and that is how these air fryer sun-dried tomatoes happened.
I often end up using half of a tomato in the morning for my kids' breakfast.Either I'm chopping it up and adding it to some mashed avocado to put on toast, or I'm doing a couple of slices to put on some kind of like cheese and avocado sandwich.
Have I mentioned before how much my kids love avocado?Anyhow, you know what I'm talking about.You just need like half of the tomato and then the other half, well, what do you do with it?Sometimes I wrap it in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge.
Sometimes I put it cut side down on a plate.Sometimes I sprinkle a little salt on it and eat it.
But yeah, if I do one of those first two options, then, you know, later in the day or the next day, I realize that it's gotten a little murky looking and maybe I don't want to use it.
So one of those days when I put it just cut side down on the plate, I came back into the kitchen later and somehow thought to myself, What happened if I just put this in the air fryer?
So I put it in there, skin side down, just because I didn't want to make a big mess in my air fryer with the juices from the tomato when I was just doing this like random, spontaneous test, right?So I just put it in there, skin side down.
I think I sprinkled some salt on it.And I put it at like a moderate temperature in the like 300 range and left it for 15 minutes.And then I came back and I was really surprised to see that it had turned
a little bit like it was drying, not so much like it was roasting.
I guess I had in my mind that I was going to make some like roasted tomatoes to serve alongside breakfast or something, but it was very clear that I was heading toward sun-dried tomato territory.
And then I got really excited and then I cut up some more tomatoes and I put them in there as well.And then I started playing around with times and temperatures and now I have perfected air fryer sun-dried tomatoes.
Perfected, but with the caveat that not all tomatoes are the same.
Some of them are juicier than others, some of them are bigger than others, and so the exact timing is going to be dependent on a lot of different factors, but I have tried this with a lot of different kinds of tomatoes and I have figured it out.
So you can make these air fryer sun-dried tomatoes anytime that you need sun-dried tomatoes.Like if you're about to make a recipe and realize you don't have any, but you have some nice fresh tomatoes, you can make them then.
Or it's really great to do, like I said, when you have that like half a tomato or a couple half tomatoes, or if you have those tomatoes, you know, they're just past their prime a little bit, bruised a little, or getting a little shrivelly in a part, then you can use those.
or really any tomatoes that are in their prime, but you just want to make them, that works too.And any variety of tomato will work.
You just are going to prep them slightly differently to get them into the right size and exposing enough of the juice inside so that they can dry properly.
So if you have grape or cherry tomatoes, I like to have them and then put them cut side up in the air fryer.
Like I said, in that very first test that I did, I didn't want to mess up my air fryer by the juices all like draining onto the air fryer basket.So I started with the skin side down, cut side up, and that worked and I haven't changed it.
So you're going to do them cut side up.
If you don't want to have to have all of those tomatoes, you can leave them whole, but then you need to poke each one with something sharp like a toothpick so that they don't burst and so that the juice can evaporate and get out, right?Okay.
So then for small tomatoes like Campari or the little Roma or plum tomatoes, you need to have those.And then you're going to place those cut side up as well, skin side down, then
Medium sized tomatoes, the ones that are often labeled like tomatoes of the vine, smaller ones of those can be halved and larger ones can be quartered.
And then when we get into those larger tomatoes, like the beef steaks, you can quarter smaller ones and cut larger ones into eights.
then even those eighths are going to have enough of that skin that you can kind of balance them skin side down in the air fryer.Okay, so then it's time to cook them.You can add a little bit of salt first.
I'll just say though that you have to be very careful because these are going to shrivel and essentially concentrate.And so the salt is going to concentrate too.If I'm adding salt, it's literally like two or three grains per
tomato, like it's very, very little.And then you are putting those into the air fryer at 250 degrees Fahrenheit, so a nice low temperature, until they are starting to shrivel but aren't browning.
And that's going to take about 40 to 60 minutes for most of the tomatoes.For those really small ones, like the halved grape and cherry tomatoes, it'll be more like 30 minutes.
Now at that point, they are still quite plump, but they will be rich and concentrated in flavor.So if you wanted to use them right away in a pasta sauce or something, you can just go right into that stage.
Now, if you want them more dried, more shriveled, like the ones you'd get at the grocery store, then you're gonna reduce the heat down to 180 degrees Fahrenheit, and you're gonna cook them until they're as dry as you'd like them to be, but it's gonna be between 20 to 40 minutes.
That is pretty much how you make them.Now, when it comes to storing them, I'm just not advising that you do anything other than freeze them.
if you put them in an airtight container or a zip top bag in the freezer they're going to keep for a few months and they're going to be delicious.
The texture changes a little bit but usually you're chopping up sun-dried tomatoes to put in things anyways and the texture is not an issue.Now if you wanted to do like the olive oil
kind of thing like, you know, when you buy sun-dried tomatoes packed in oil in a jar at the grocery store, you can, but it actually can be risky.So you don't want to keep them for more than four days like that.
So you're going to put them in a jar, put olive oil on them, seal the jar and put it in the fridge for at most four days.And if they start to look like milky or weird at all, throw them out before that, but they should be good for the four days.
And then when you want to use them, sometimes that oil can kind of like solidify. so you want to take the jar out of the fridge 30 minutes before you're going to use it so that the oil can get liquid again.
Now you can also store these at room temperature if you haven't put any oil on them, which is sort of more like when you buy sun-dried tomatoes in a bag and they're really dry inside.
what you're going to do is leave them out on a rack after you're done cooking them uncovered on a rack for at least 24 hours so they're drying even more and then you want to store them in a paper bag so that any remaining moisture is able to leave from there and they don't get moldy but if they start to change color or smell anything white or green growing on them
throw them out.Again, I don't recommend really doing any of these things, but if you really want to, you can.Those ones that you're storing at room temperature in a bag, those are going to have to be rehydrated.They're going to be really dry.
So with any of these, if you want to rehydrate them, not the oil ones, but even the frozen ones, you would just pour some hot but not boiling water on them.Or you can heat tomato juice or the tomato liquid from like canned tomatoes.
You can heat that and soak them in that for about 10 minutes and that is going to rehydrate them.
Oh, the other way you can store them is after you've cooked them, put them in an airtight container in the fridge without submerging them in anything, and they will be great in there for three to four days.
Again, if they start to discolor, get milky, look odd, smell bad, throw them out.But three to four days, you are good.
Like I said though, my preference is the freezer, and you just put them in an airtight container, and they're good in there for three months. And when you put them in the container, you can kind of spread them out in there.
Like if I'm putting them in a zip top bag, I'll put a couple in each corner of the bag and a couple right in the middle and seal it and then put it flat in the freezer at first so that they don't freeze all clumped up together.
Once they're frozen solid, you can shake them up and they can be near each other. but then when I want to just reach in and grab a couple, they're not all stuck together and you could just grab what you need, right?
I think that is everything I have to tell you about these.I cannot wait for you to try them.They're just such a great thing to do when you have those random tomatoes that aren't looking so hot.
This is something to resurrect them and make them delicious again.I will put the link to this recipe in the show notes for this podcast episode or you can head to cookthestory.com slash R-O-T-D and get it there.
I will say that everything there is arranged by date, so it's helpful to know that today is October 30th of 2024.
And I just want to say if you listen to this podcast regularly and you love it, please consider leaving a rating and review on your podcast app.Not all of them allow ratings and reviews, but Apple Podcasts definitely does.Spotify does.
I would love to hear what you think.Thank you so much. I'm Christine Pittman from CookTheStory.com, TheCookful.com, the all-new chicken cookbook, and from this podcast, Recipe of the Day, I hope you have a great day.Let's get cooking.
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