When a guy named Meathead says one of his favorite things to smoke is a vegetable, it is time to pay attention. These sweet baubles are superb for salads, on a pizza or focaccia, in pasta, baked into breads, on baked potatoes, in stews, in pot pies, in roulades like porchetta, on a BLT, stuffed into chicken breasts or pork chops, in omelets or scrambled eggs, in anything with a cream sauce, or anything you would do with raisins or sun-dried tomatoes.
- Tomatoes—that’s the only ingredient
- Grill topper (or something to keep them from falling through the grates when they shrink)
Set the temperature for a smoker or the indirect zone of a grill as low as 170 to 200°F. Don’t get any hotter than this. Get some smoke rolling and keep it rolling for at least an hour or two.
Spread the tomatoes around on a grill topper, trying to leave a little room between them. After 3 hours or so, roll them around a bit. If you want, you can bring them inside and finish them in the oven or dehydrator.
When they have shrunk to about 25 percent of their original size yet remain pliable like raisins, they are done. Don’t let them get hard.
They’ll keep in the fridge for weeks depending on the moisture content, but I’ve kept them in the freezer in zipper bags for a year until the next crop arrived.
