Tomato "Maike"

* How to cook dried vegetables?
In the oven.
First, the tomatoes and peppers must be prepared. Use only healthy, well-ripened fruits. Remove the stalk from them and sections of the skin if it has cracks, poorly colored or discolored areas. Cut each fruit into four to six parts, remove the seeds with a spoon, sprinkle the vegetables with table salt and a mixture of dried herbs (dill, thyme, basil), leave for 20 minutes. Then lay parchment on a metal baking sheet, grease it with vegetable oil and place the tomatoes and peppers cut side down. Never use aluminum utensils or foil! The acid contained in tomatoes, at the slightest heating, very actively begins to interact with aluminum, and the resulting salt spoils the taste of the workpiece. It is better to take a large plate made of thick glass or faience.
Preheat the oven to + 80 ° and cook the tomatoes for 3 hours (peppers - 2 hours), leaving the oven lid ajar. Then turn the vegetables over, flatten them slightly with a spatula and continue to dry at +130°C, remembering to turn over every 2-3 hours. The whole process will take about 12 hours. Long, but not troublesome.
From 15-20 kg of fresh vegetables, 1 kg of dried vegetables is obtained. Store dried vegetables in a glass jar with a tight lid: they tend to absorb moisture.
In winter, dry vegetables should be dipped in boiling water for 5 minutes before use. You can also soak some tomatoes, then store them in oil. To do this, slightly squeeze excess water from the tomatoes, put in a jar, pour olive oil. Such tomatoes are kept in the refrigerator for no more than two weeks.
In sauna.
We remove moisture from the washed tomatoes with a paper towel and let the fruits lie a little in the sun. We transfer the stewed vegetables to the sauna (temperature + 105 ° C, humidity 12%) on the upper shelf covered with baking paper, and leave to cool until morning. From 1.3 kg of fresh tomatoes, 64 g of dried tomatoes are obtained, similar to dried apricots.
We put the tomatoes in jars and immediately fill them with vegetable oil. You can pre-grease the tomatoes with white wine vinegar.
* The most important thing is to choose the right variety.
The best for drying are varieties of pepper with thick, fleshy walls. And from tomatoes - varieties with dense pulp, dense skin and a small seed chamber with a small number of seeds (their fruits contain pectins and dry substances more than other varieties).