We had this amazing balcony tomato harvest this year, and I wanted to process the tomatoes in a way that preserved their amazing flavor and sweetness. Since we had so many, I decided to dry some of them and preserve them in oil. The first thing to do, is to cut the tomatoes in half and get them drying.

You need to dry them at a low temperature. I dried mine at 77 ºC, only because my oven does not go any lower. If your oven is a convection oven, that’s ideal. If not, you should air out the oven a few times while drying the tomatoes. Once they are as dry as you like, get them out of the oven. This can take multiple hours.

At this point, you can already use the tomatoes. They will stay good for days or weeks, depending on how dry they are. Alternatively, you can flavor them further with olive oil, garlic and herbs or spices.

To make the tomatoes last even longer, I then baked them in the oven. Put the jars that you want preserved in a shallow water bath, and place the whole thing in the oven. The oven should be preheated to 110ºC. Leave the jars in the oven until the oil inside is bubbling. Then leave the jars outside the oven to cool off. The content of the jars will stay good outside the fridge for several months.