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Award-winning chef, author and forager Alan Bergo. Food is all around you.

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Oven-Dried Tomatoes with Bee Balm and Ramp Leaves

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oven dried tomatoes recipe This is one of my absolute favorite ways to preserve tomatoes—great for the bounty of tomato season, or even if you’re just craving good tomato flavor in the off season, which I often do. They’re made to mimic the oil-cured, semi-dried Italian tomatoes that restaurants often purchase from wholesale purveyors. If I say so myself, too, they’re even better than the ones in the jar, since doing them at home means you have more control over the drying process, and, if you’re like me, you may like them dried a bit longer which concentrates their flavor and makes for a dense, meaty texture. 

Essentially they’re tomatoes seasoned with wild herbs and dried slowly in an oven for a few hours. 

Wild Herbs 

Here I use one of my favorite combinations of wild herbs: bee balm and dried ramp leaves. I use them because they work well together, and they’re both wild herbs I forage, but you could use all kinds of different herbs to flavor your tomatoes. Here’s a few ideas. 

  • Summer savory 
  • Fresh thyme 
  • Basil 
  • Mint 
  • Lovage 
  • Marjoram or oregano 

Other additions 

  • Add a pinch of ground coriander seed 
  • Add a pinch of crushed red pepper flakes or a couple dashes of your favorite hot sauce 
Hedgehog mushroom soup with foraged greens, beans and tomatoes

The dried tomatoes are great slipped into a brothy soup, like this one with hedgehog mushrooms.

Ideas for using 

  • The finished, dried tomatoes are fantastic anywhere you like, but they really shine added to salads, especially heavy, vegetable-based warm salads of white beans, artichokes, greens, and mushrooms—just think antipasti.
  • Their concentrated, aromatic flavor also makes a good addition to stuffings, especially with meat, like stuffing inside of a chicken breast with a slice of fontina cheese. 
  • Add them to homemade pizzas and flatbreads instead of fresh tomatoes, since they’re dried, they won’t give off water that can make things soggy. 
  • Just like regular tomatoes, they’re great with cheese. Think of things along the lines of winter caprese salad, with slices or chunks of fresh mozzarella, and a dollop of pesto. 

oven dried tomatoes recipe

oven dried tomatoes recipe
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Oven Dried Tomatoes with Bee Balm and Ramp Leaves

Rich, tender tomatoes scented with wild herbs are a great way to preserve extras from the garden and are delicious mixed into just about anything you put them in, especially salads and pastas.
Prep Time15 mins
Cook Time5 hrs
Course: Condiment
Cuisine: Italian
Keyword: Bergamot, Ramp Leaves
Servings: 4

Ingredients

  • 4 lbs tomatoes
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 2 T olive oil
  • Generous pinch bergamot
  • Generous pinch dried ramps
  • 1 teaspoon black pepper
  • 1 large clove garlic grated
  • Pinch of chili such as red pepper flakes or Aleppo chili

Instructions

  • Shave off a thin slice where the tomato came off of the vine. Cut the tomatoes in half the long way, then squeeze the seeds out into a bowl as best you can.
  • Put the sliced, squeezed tomatoes in a large bowl, toss with the remaining ingredients and allow to sit on the counter for at least 30 minutes, preferably an hour or two while you do something else.
  • Preheat the oven to 200F, lay the tomatoes out cut-side up on a baking sheet lined with a silicone mat, then cook for 5 hours, turning the heat off and leaving them in the oven overnight to dry with the residual heat.
  • The next day, remove the tomatoes, slip off their skins, cut into 1/4s, put in a jar, cover them in olive oil and refrigerate until needed. They’ll last a couple weeks.
  • Smoking the tomatoes on low heat 180F, etc, and or tossing them with vinegar before packing in the jar are both excellent variations.

Notes

Smoking the tomatoes on low heat 180F, etc, and or tossing them with vinegar before packing in the jar are both excellent variations.

More 

Cooking with Bee Balm 

Hedgehog Mushroom Soup with Dried Tomatoes and White Beans 

Related

Previous Post: « Candy Cap Tres-Leches Cake
Next Post: Hedgehog Mushroom Soup with Beans, Watercress and Tomato »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Mark

    October 21, 2021 at 11:47 am

    are you missing the ingredients and proportions?

    Reply
    • Alan Bergo

      October 21, 2021 at 12:51 pm

      Hey thanks Mark, sometimes the formatting of things gets wonky when I do software updates. Thanks for the heads up! I fixed it.

      Reply

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FORAGER | CHEF®
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Author: The Forager Chef’s Book of Flora
James Beard Award ‘22
Host: Field Forest Feast 👇
streaming on @tastemade

Alan Bergo
Had a blast on the last day of the @wild.fed shoot Had a blast on the last day of the @wild.fed shoot cooking in the Garden of Eden, a.k.a Sam Thayer’s orchard. 

We’d planned on making ground squirrel, bullfrog and crayfish gumbo but only the crayfish came through. Luckily I had some back up andouille just in case. 

It’s may not be traditional, but gumbo with crayfish broth, a heap of @mushroomforaginginmn porcini, milkweed pods (in lieu of okra) wild rice and crayfish-chanterelle salad didn’t suck. 6 of us polished off a gallon 😁.

H/o to chef Lenny Russo who I pestered with questions on frog-based foods beforehand. Hyper-local meals like this are what we made at Heartland in St Paul during my tenure there. 

@danielvitalis 
@grantguiliano 

#ditchlobster #mudbugs #gumbo #crayfish #wildrice #wildfed
Long, fun day snatching crayfish out of the water Long, fun day snatching crayfish out of the water by hand with Sam Thayer and @danielvitalis for @wild.fed 

Daniel and Sam were the apex predators, but I got a few. 

Without a net catching crayfish by hand is definitely a wax-on wax-off sort of skill. Clears your mind. 

They’re going into gumbo with porcini, sausage and milkweed pods today. 

#crayfish #ninjareflexes #waxonwaxoff #normalthings #onset🎥🎬
Working all day on preps for cattail lateral rhizo Working all day on preps for cattail lateral rhizomes and blueberries for this weeks shoot with @wildfed 

Been a few years since I worked with these. Thankfully Sam Thayer dropped a couple off for me to work with. They’re tender, crisp and delicious. 

Sam mentioned their mild flavor and texture could be because they don’t have to worry about predators eating them, since they grow in the muck of cattail marshes. 

I think they could use a pet name. Pond tusk? Swamp spears? Help me out here. 😂

Nature makes the coolest things. 

#itcamefromthepond #cattail #rhizomes #foraging #typhalatifolia
I liked the staff meal I made for Mondays shoot so I liked the staff meal I made for Mondays shoot so much we filmed it instead of the original dish I’d planned. 

Cooked natural wild rice (not the black shiny stuff) is great hot, cold, sweet or savory. It’s a perfect, filling lunch for a long day of berry picking. 

I make them with whatever I have on hand. Mushrooms will fade into the background a little here, so I use a bunch of them, along with lots of herbs and hickory nut oil + dill flowers. 

I’m eating the leftovers today back up in the barrens (hopefully) getting some more bluebs for another shoot this week w @wild.fed 

#wilwilwice #wildrice #chanterelles #campfood #castironcooking
Baby’s first homegrown mushrooms! Backyard wine Baby’s first homegrown mushrooms! Backyard wine caps on hardwood sawdust from my lumberjack buddy.

Next up blewits. Spawn from @northsporemushrooms

#winecaps #strophariaaeruginosa #allthemushroomtags
It’s wild cherry season. I’ll be picking from It’s wild cherry season. I’ll be picking from my favorite spot tomorrow a.m. and have room for a couple helpers. It’s at an event on a farm just south of St. Cloud. 

If you’re interested send me a message and I’ll raffle off the spots. Plenty of cherries to go around. I’ll be leading a short plant walk around the farm too. 

#chokecherries #foraging #prunusvirginiana #summervibes
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