Jim and Deborah make a lot of soup to warm up cold days. Dehydrating and roasting tomatoes to store over winter, for use in said soups, has become a yearly kitchen task on the farm. This year, we dehydrated them a little longer than we have before and found that these dehydrated tomatoes (or Tomato Crisps, if we’re feeling fancy), make a great snack, salad “crouton,” a topping for pizza or pasta dishes, a nice addition to an open faced sandwich, and that’s just what we’ve tried so far! At this rate, we’re not sure they’ll make it into any soups….

Here’s how we made the Tomato Crisps:

 1) We raced against the mower to glean as many cherry tomatoes as we could, but you could just as easily start by grabbing a Hungry Hollow pint from the store.

2) After giving the cherry tomatoes a good rinse, we halved them and then placed them cut-side up on a tray in the dehydrator set to 135ºF until they were good and crispy, about 14 hours (if you want more of a tomato raisin, just monitor and take them out when they’re at the desired raisin level – probably somewhere around 8 hours).

3) Put them on EVERYTHING, eat them like chips, and start planning to make more for next year