Cooking Resources

medtran49 · 05-04-2011, 05:34 PM

Had a decent amount of tomatos from our little garden so...

I just popped in a tray of our oven dried/roasted tomatos with parm, salt, pepper, basil, and a touch of olive oil. Trying out the convection feature on the relatively new oven since someone asked the question in the recent dehydrator thread. Temp would only go as low as 170, although I'm not sure if that's because that is as low as it will go or because I had the oven on earlier roasting a beet for a beet green, orange segment, beet slices salad for dinner and 170 is what the oven had cooled down to. Regardless, it will be interesting to see if the convection effect has any difference on the drying/roasting time.

We decided to use the rest of the tomatos in a basic Italian fresh tomato sauce instead of roasting them all. Penne alla vodka is probably in our future.

Off to supreme some oranges for the salad and they are blood oranges, yummy.

**kadesma** · 05-04-2011, 05:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by medtran49

Had a decent amount of tomatos from our little garden so...

I just popped in a tray of our oven dried/roasted tomatos with parm, salt, pepper, basil, and a touch of olive oil. Trying out the convection feature on the relatively new oven since someone asked the question in the recent dehydrator thread. Temp would only go as low as 170, although I'm not sure if that's because that is as low as it will go or because I had the oven on earlier roasting a beet for a beet green, orange segment, beet slices salad for dinner and 170 is what the oven had cooled down to. Regardless, it will be interesting to see if the convection effect has any difference on the drying/roasting time.

We decided to use the rest of the tomatos in a basic Italian fresh tomato sauce instead of roasting them all. Penne alla vodka is probably in our future.

Off to supreme some oranges for the salad and they are blood oranges, yummy.

I roast roma tomatoes all the time, just don't put on cheese. with my oven it tends to burn at any temp but I find the tomatoes to be lovely and put them through a food mill They are great. Enjoy
kadesma

medtran49 · 05-04-2011, 06:11 PM

I've been making these oven dried/roasted with fresh-grated cheese for years and have never had a problem with cheese burning.

medtran49 · 05-04-2011, 06:35 PM

Well the convection feature seems to be moving things along much faster. They are already showing signs of drying around the edges and it's only been an hour or so.

**kadesma** · 05-04-2011, 07:15 PM

[QUOTE=medtran49;996256]I've been making these oven dried/roasted with fresh-grated cheese for years and have never had a problem with cheese burning.[/QUOTEyou've had good luck with them. Me my oven is a p.i.t.a.I tried some with my convection and they turned out great. I put cheese on but afterward.
kadesma

medtran49 · 05-05-2011, 10:50 AM

Four hours after being on convection bake at 170 and sitting in oven overnight while it cooled down. The question of how low will it go has been answered this morning, 170, since I decided to put them back in a little longer. I know, I know, probably not the greatest thing to do in letting them sit out and in a cooling oven all night but they weren't quite done and I have to be up at 4:40 to go to work so... Oh, they totally covered the racks when they first started out, forgot to get a pic though.

medtran49 · 05-05-2011, 12:14 PM

Five hours now and I think they are done.

justplainbill · 05-05-2011, 12:23 PM

Looks like you had quite a bit of dripping. Next time you might want to try 5+ continuous uninterrupted hours. Thanks for the update. Must be hard to dry in high humidity.

medtran49 · 05-05-2011, 12:43 PM

That was actually a lot less drippage than I normally have but I also used a lot less olive oil this time around. They were fat juicy tomatos, all picked ripe off the vine within the past 3-4 days, never in the fridge. They are a roma variety but different than what you get in the grocery store, not that smooth, rounded oblong shape. They are kind of pear-shaped with very, very gently angled faces is the best way I can describe them and they have a lot more meat and juice. They were so ripe that I was afraid to wait another day as a few of them had already gone past the point of no return.

I think the convection really helped. It's usually 6 or more hours drying time at 200 so 5 hours at 170 is an improvement (for sure regarding the electric bill). I wouldn't even try to dry something naturally down here, it would mold long before it dried.