sun-dried tomatoes

Sun-dried tomatoes you can make in your own oven—just 3 hours, deeply sweet, keep for weeks in olive oil. No weird equipment, big flavor payoff.

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Total Time 3 1

Servings: 8 portions

Course: Appetizer

Cuisine: Mediterranean

Calories: 110

Ingredients Method Notes

Ingredients

Main

1 kg ripe tomatoes
2 tablespoons salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon dried oregano
0.5 teaspoon black pepper

Method

Preheat your oven to 100°C (210°F). If your oven doesn’t go that low, set it at the lowest possible temperature and crack the door open with a wooden spoon.
Slice the tomatoes in half lengthwise. Scoop out the seeds with a small spoon if you want a firmer texture (I skip this when I’m short on time).
Arrange the tomato halves, cut side up, on a large baking sheet lined with parchment. Don’t crowd them—space helps them dry evenly.
Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and dried oregano. Drizzle the olive oil across all the tomatoes. I do this with my fingers so every tomato gets a little oil.
Bake for about 3 hours, checking at the 2.5 hour mark. The tomatoes should look wrinkled but still a bit pliable—not brittle. Swap the tray positions if using more than one tray, so they dry evenly.
Let cool completely on the tray. Eat right away or store in a clean jar with enough olive oil to cover, in the fridge. They keep like this for two weeks. (If packing in oil, add a clove of garlic or a few thyme sprigs for even more flavor.)

Notes

I started making oven sun-dried tomatoes the summer I realized I couldn’t eat store-bought jars fast enough to use up my backyard tomatoes. It’s how I stretch tomato season for weeks.

Practical tips

Don’t use watery tomatoes. Roma or plum tomatoes work best because they dry quicker and keep a firm bite. Juicier varieties will work, but they take longer and sometimes get mushy if you don’t seed them first.

Don’t rush the oven time. More heat doesn’t mean faster sun-dried. Low and slow is what concentrates the flavor (and also what lets you walk away and forget about them for an hour).

If you’re like me and always have uneven tomato sizes, check midway and scoop off the smaller ones when they look ready. That way you avoid tomato chips (unless you like crunchy bits for salads—which actually make a great topping, by the way).

Substitutions & variations

You can use cherry tomatoes for this—just halve them, they’ll shrivel beautifully. If you swap olive oil for another, use something mild. Sunflower is fine, but skip coconut or butter here—it overpowers everything. Fresh herbs like thyme or rosemary go in at the start and give subtle flavor, but don’t use fresh basil—it discolors and gets bitter in this much heat.

Storage notes

I keep these in a jar in the fridge, topped with extra olive oil, and they last about two weeks. If I want to stretch them longer, I freeze in small bags—no oil needed. They come out a bit softer after thawing, but the flavor stays sharp.