You’ve heard of (and probably had) sun-dried tomatoes. These are made in your oven! You can use cherry, pear, plum, or roma tomatoes. Make sure you use similarly sized tomatoes for best results.

Preheat the oven to 250F. Put a rack on a baking sheet. (I used a cooling rack on a cookie sheet.) Halve tomatoes lengthwise and lay on the rack skin side down. Generously sprinkle with freshly ground black pepper and kosher salt. (I am as sodium-free as possible and don’t use salt at all, and they came out just fine.) Place fresh herb sprigs (I used my home grown rosemary, thyme, and oregano) over the top of the tomatoes. Roast until tomatoes are shriveled and barely moist, anywhere from 2 hours for cherry tomatoes to 7 hours for roma tomatoes, depending on their size. Pack oven-dried tomatoes tightly in a sealed jar drizzled with extra-virgin olive oil and keep in the fridge. I don’t know how long they’ll keep – I ate mine within a few days.

This picture shows tomatoes with rosemary and oregano all ready to pop in the oven. Your house will smell like an Italian kitchen in about ten minutes. :D