Tomato Chips

Who would have guessed how wonderful these tomato chips are! They are very crisp, almost like eating the lightest, crispiest potato chip, with the surprise of the concentrated flavor of a tomato picked in summer. In the winter, really good tomatoes are hard to come by; they just don’t have that wonderful deep tomato flavor. These do! No matter the season. Delicious.

Yes, you could serve them with a dip, put them on a cheeseboard, top a delicious soup with them but eating them one delicious bite at a time is the way to enjoy these. I can imagine them served on the side with grilled cheese sandwiches. Yum. There are so many possibilities.

A pint of grape tomatoes makes about a half cup of dried tomatoes so consider making more if you want some to eat now and some to share when friends come. They would make a wonderful gift to take along to a friend’s house if they last that long. These will be made often at my house. Start them in the morning and you will have them in time for an evening appetizer.

These tomato chips are a nice crispy topping for a green salad. I think these would also be tasty sprinkled on butternut squash soup. This recipe will come in handy to use up all those tomatoes at the end of summer.

I used the convection setting on my gas oven to avoid the top element coming on and burning the chips before they had a chance to dry out. I baked them for 7 1/2 hours. The larger pieces were still a bit pliable but I did discover that when cooled they crisped up so they could probably have come out earlier. I ended up with 1/2 cup of dried tomatoes.

This tomato chips recipe leads to a versatile end product. The process took quite a bit more time than the recipe called for, but my curiosity motivated me to continue testing this recipe until I received the perfect crunch. When I finally tasted the tomatoes in their crunchy form, I received an unexpected richness of flavor that excited me. Due to this, I used these little tomato chips as a garnish for my pasta dish. In addition, I have been eating these as a snack throughout the day. If you want a small burst of flavor and a surprise crunch, this recipe can fulfill your need.

As far as addictions go, I suppose this is a fairly safe one to have. I bought the best-looking grape tomatoes I could find. The day I was shopping they happened to be grape tomatoes from Trader Joe’s. These were very red, small, and succulent. They came in a 1-pound box. I cut the tomatoes in half, and not in fourths, because of their small size. Let the size of the tomatoes determine how many pieces you cut each tomato into. My tomatoes were so small that they took only 5 hours and 35 minutes to completely dry and become crispy, and not pliable.

I tasted a few and determined that I did not need to add any salt. I loved the intense tomato-y flavor. What did we eat these with? Our fingers. I did have plans to use these in a pasta dish, or on a pizza, but they completely disappeared when we could not stop popping them in our mouths like the best kind of candy one can imagine. I am hoping to try and save some of my next batch of tomato chips and try to use them as an ingredient in a dish, but I also feel that eating them like candy will be just fine, also.

These tiny tomato treats have it all: A vibrant crimson color, a surprisingly enticing aroma, and a perfectly concentrated, umami flavor. Better yet, the effort-to-gratification ratio is favorable, with just a few minutes of hands-on kitchen time. I’ll definitely be making these again.