Category Archives: Tomatoes

Using Sun Dried Tomatoes

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Reconstituting Sun Dried Tomatoes

Sun Dried tomatoes in a salad.

Method 2 Sun dried tomatoes in a salad. (the jar method)

OK so you have lots of sun dried tomatoes but they are useless unless you know what to do with them. The obvious thing to do is to add them to stews and anything you are cooking. In this post I want to tell you how to reconstitute them so that they can be used in salads etc as a substitute for fresh tomatoes in the months that fresh tomatoes are not available.

Method 1
Put some tomatoes on a deep plate.  Cover them with boiling water. Cover with an upturned plate. Leave for 15 minutes or until they are soft. Pour off the water. Sprinkle on some salt and drizzle some olive oil over them. They can be served as a tomato salad just on their own.  As you can see some of the sun dried tomatoes can go a bit black but they taste the same so I don’t care. 

Sun Dried Tomatoes in a salad

Method 1 Sun Dried Tomatoes in a salad

Method 2
Cram some dried tomatoes into a glass jar. Add a small teaspoonful of sugar to the jar. Fill the jar up with a mixture of water and vinegar. The ratio is according to taste and how strong the vinegar is. Leave for 24 hours. Use within 3 days because they will start to ferment. I tend to use these tomatoes as a substitute for fresh tomatoes in winter salads. 

The tomatoes on this page were dried in my solar drier. Click here to see it

Stupice Tomatoes

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Stupice Tomatoes

Stupice Tomato

Stupice Tomato

Stupice are one of my favourite tomatoes and possible the most favourite.  I originally bought the seeds several years ago when I was trying to find cold resistant heirloom varieties. I bought several packets of cold tolerant seeds such as “First in the Field” “Arctic” etc but Stupice were the ones that I most liked. There are several reasons why I am a stupice tomato aficionado which I will list below.

Taste: The taste is perfect with just the right contrast  of sweet and acid flavours.

Size: They are gold ball sized which means that they don’t take ages to pick and process like cherry tomatoes. 

Productivity: They are very prolific and produce vines of several tomatoes.

More Information: Stupice tomatoes originally came from the Czech Republic. I pronounce Stupice as “STEW PIS” but it should be “STU PEACH KA” or “STOO PEET SAY”. Stupice is  naturally disease resistant and tends to suffer less from blight than other tomatoes planted next to it.  It is compact indeterminate (vine) type with potato leaves. The golf ball sized tomatoes  grow in clusters.  They matures in 60-65 days.  They are said to be cold tolerant. 

Bowl of Stupice Tomatoes

Bowl of Stupice Tomatoes

One of the best ways to use these tomatoes is to make a tomato salad. Just cut them into chunks. Add a sprinkle of salt and a good glug of extra virgin olive oil. Wait 20 minutes for the salt to pull out some of the juices and you have a dish fit for heaven. 

You can buy stupice tomatoes here