What To Do With Excess Tomatoes

Puree them, roast them, sauce them, turn them into soup – honestly, there’s plenty you can do with a tomato glut. I’ve decided to turn mine into oven-dried tomatoes, with the aid of some homegrown herbs too.

What about the higher carbohydrate content of tomatoes, I hear you ask. A medium-sized tomato – roughly 100g, say – contains 4g of carbohydrates, 1.2g of fibre. If you’re going to use them for sauces, chances are you’ll be using quite a few of them. Eat your tomatoes with protein, as part of a salad with chicken or ham, for instance, or as a sauce in a curry.

It is easy to eat a lot of sun or oven-dried tomatoes. They concentrated flavour makes them very tasty, for one. Because they have lost a lot of water, they are smaller and denser than normal tomatoes and you could end up eating a lot of them – and a lot of carbohydrates as a result. Eat them sparingly, two or three added to salads or with some sliced meat.

I’ve used rapeseed oil here to keep my product as Scottish and local as possible, but you can also use extra virgin olive oil.

Oven-dried tomatoes

Servings: 1-2 jam jars
Time: 3hr 45 mins
Difficulty: easy
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250g tomatoes
Fresh oregano – about 8tbsp chopped
Fresh basil – about 3tbsp chopped
6 cloves garlic, crushed
5-6 black peppercorns
Salt and pepper
Rapeseed oil

Cut the tomatoes in half and scoop out the seeds. It’s easiest if you use your fingers, or you can use a teaspoon.
Place the tomatoes, cut side down on a grill rack over a tray and leave for half an hour to drain.
Preheat the oven to 100 degrees C.
Mix together the crushed garlic, oregano, basil and salt and pepper. Using a teaspoon insert tiny amounts of the mixture into the tomato halves.
Sprinkle a tray with a little of the rapeseed oil and place the tomatoes cut-side up on it. Cook in the low oven, turning the tray a few times, for three hours.
Place in sterilised jars* and top with rapeseed oil.

Sun-dried/oven-dried tomatoes have roughly 23g of carbs (6g fibre) per 100g.

*To sterilise jars, heat the oven to 140 degrees C. Wash the jars and their lids in hot, soapy water and place in the oven to dry out completely – about 7-10 minutes. Fill and seal.

4 thoughts on “What To Do With Excess Tomatoes”

You’ve just reminded me that I asked for – and received – a dehydrator for Christmas. We moved earlier this year and it’s packed away. I’d completely forgotten! Time to unpack it and try this recipe! Thanks Emma!

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