Easy Oven-dried Tomatoes

I am in serious denial that summer is over! This year I planted my first real garden and have really enjoyed having so much yumminess in my backyard. My favorite thing so far has definitely has been fresh tomatoes. Cannot be beat! I planted 5 varietals: chocolate cherry, sungold, beefsteak, plum, and one other I can't remember. Delicious so many ways.

Some day I would like to learn how can, but for this year I've been preserving tomatoes by making sauce or peeling whole tomatoes and storing in the freezer. And let's just say our freezer is getting mighty full! So I was excited to come across a more space friendly method...oven drying.

We use sun dried tomatoes a lot but they can be expensive. I had no idea how easy they are to make especially if you have a convection oven. Here are the steps (I used plum tomatoes):

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees
2. Quarter washed tomatoes
3. Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper
4. Place in one layer on cookie sheet lined with parchment paper
5. Cook for 12 hours (or until tomatoes have dried to desired consistency)

You can either freeze or store in a jar with some olive oil. So easy and so yummy!