DIY sun dried tomatoes

Hello again boys and girls and welcome back to the Hipstercurious kitchen. Today we'll again make something that does not even remotely resemble a meal, just like last time. I figure if I keep this up, maybe in 6 months I could put together an entire meal...

Anyhow, I found really tasty cherry tomatoes in my regular grocery store and I wanted to make something super tasty out of them. As you might have noticed by now, my cooking generally consists of condiments (also sauces and side dishes).

If you like sun dried tomatoes, you're going to love these! It's not hard making them, but it does take a while in the oven. It's worth it though. I used this recipe from Smitten Kitchen as a guideline (recipes are guidelines, right? no point of following them exactly, right?)

So, you'll need tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, and salt.

Cut the tomatoes in half. It actually makes sense to cut them crosswise, this exposes more of the liquidy inside to the heat and I find they turn out more even. But honestly, if you're as scatterbrained and/or lazy as me, then it's not really such a big deal. Half is half.

I threw mine in a bowl and poured in some olive oil. Mix them up and lay them out on the baking sheet with some gloves of garlic. Sprinkle with salt. Here you could put other spices too, herbs, maybe some pepper. I'm actually thinking about trying this with some chilli at some point. Generally though, these don't really need much spices in my opinion, a bit of salt is enough.

Then put them in the oven at 225 degrees (that's roughly 110 degrees celsius) for about 3 hours (yeah, that's why they take so long)

This is what they should look like. These are seriously amazing. No joke. Totally worth the time it takes in the oven. Please keep in mind that these shrink like nobody's business. Which basically means that the three boxes of tomatoes I bought to make them, ended up fitting a tiny glass jar. So make a lot at one go.

If you don't eat them all immediately then store them in a tightly sealed container with some olive oil. I added the roasted garlic in too for extra tastiness.

Word of warning: once you try these, the ones you usually get from the grocery store are no longer enough.