Sun-dried tomatoes are probably one of my favourite foods. Because they’re dry, the flavours of the tomato are intensified and they can add a delicious umami to anything they’re in. In our house we will add sun-dried tomatoes (or Sun Toms) to a lot of dishes. Tossed in salads, blended into soups, diced up in pasta, they are a real staple in our house. The most common thing we use them for though, is sauces. These 4 sauces are so easy and delicious, I now they’ll quickly become part of your repertoire.
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Drying tomatoes is one of my favourite ways to save some of that awesome summer flavour. We don’t have a sun dryer, I dry them in a dehydrator, but it still means we get to prolong the life of our summer harvest well into the winter. And if we don’t grow a large enough harvest to satisfy all of our tomato needs, we can still go to the store and buy them!
Dry or Oil Packed?
For all of these recipes, you can use home dried tomatoes, or store bought. And all the recipes can use tomatoes stored in oil or dry packed. I tend to prefer the dry packed ones, so that the flavour of the tomato isn’t lost in the oil or diluted at all. But some for a recipe that would be improved by the taste of the oil, or to have a touch extra fat; oil packed can be nice. So we usually keep both types on hand once our home dried supply runs out.
Three of these sun dried tomato recipes require a blender or immersion blender. If you don’t have a blender and don’t think you’ll use it that much, or that it would be too bulky, immersion blenders are really great. They are much more compact, and usually a lot less expensive. I didn’t own a standard blender until about 4 years ago, and didn’t really need one, until I started making smoothies. I love my immersion blender and use it way more often than the standard one. So if you are tentative about buying a full size blender, immersion blenders are a terrific alternative.
Sun Dried Tomato Relish
First up, Sun Dried Tomato Relish. This one is super easy and fresh tasting. It is also the one out of the four that doesn’t need a blender. The ingredients are simply chopped up and tossed in a bowl. It is an excellent topping for burgers (Like this Bean Burger), or a spread for sandwiches and wraps. It includes roasted red peppers, and you can use store bought, but if you want to try making your own, check out my How-To here.
Sun Dried Tomato Relish
Ingredients
- 1 cup Sun Dried Tomatoes diced
- 1 Roasted Red Pepper diced
- 1 tbsp Capers roughly chopped
- 1/4 Red Onion finely diced
- 1 1/2 tbsp Red Wine Vinegar
- 2 tbsp Olive Oil I sometimes use a roasted garlic infused oil, and it's great!
- Salt and Pepper to taste
Instructions
- Combine all your ingredients in a bowl, and adjust the salt and pepper to your tastes. Store in a glass jar in the fridge for up to two weeks.
Sun Dried Tomato Chipotle Sauce
Next up, Sun Dried Tomato Chipotle Sauce. This sauce is a deep burgundy colour with all the smokey sweetness you would want in a BBQ style sauce. We most recently used it as a pizza sauce along with some BBQ chicken. It is also great mixed into mayonnaise for dipping fries, or used as a sauce in burritos.
Sun Dried Tomato Chipotle Sauce
Equipment
- Blender or Immersion blender
Ingredients
- 85 g Sun Dried Tomatoes
- 1 can Chipotle in adobo sauce
- 1/2 cup Maple Syrup
- 1/4 cup Ketchup
Instructions
- Add all ingredients to the bowl of a blender, and blend until smooth. If it's too thick, loosen it with a bit of water at a time.
- Store in a sealed container in the fridge for up to two weeks.
Sun Dried Tomato Pizza/Pasta Sauce
Our third sauce is a Simple Pizza/Pasta Sauce. It might seem broad to cover pizza and pasta sauce in the same recipe, but this one can handle it. It begins as a good thick sauce, perfect for pizzas. And can be a wonderful pasta sauce, if a good 1/2 cup of pasta cooking water and a swirl of butter are added. It’s a winner.
Sun Dried Tomato Pizza/Pasta Sauce
Equipment
- Blender or Immersion blender
Ingredients
- 125 g Sun Dried Tomatoes
- 1 can Tomato Paste
- 1 tsp Garlic Powder
- 1 tbsp Dried Basil
- 1/2 tbsp Dried Oregano
- 1 tbsp Olive Oil
- 1 tbsp Honey
- 1 tsp Balsamic Vinegar
- ~2/3 cup Water To thin the sauce as needed. Add as much as you need to get the consistency you want.
Instructions
- Combine all the ingredients except the water in a blender and begin to blend. Add the water little by little, continuing to blend, until the sauce reaches the consistency you want. To use as a pizza sauce, keep it a bit thinner. To use as a pasta sauce, loosed the sauce with 1/2-1 cup of your hot pasta cooking water, and 1 tbsp of melted butter.
- Store in a container in the fridge for up to two weeks.
Sun Dried Tomato Gochujang Sauce
Finally our last one, is a Sun Dried Tomato Gochujang Sauce. Gochujang is a fermented chili paste from South Korea that I was only introduced to recently. (My knowledge of Korean cuisine is sorely lacking, hopeful to be corrected soon through much delicious research)
It is spicy, and earthy, and has a slight funk. I became pretty obsessed when I bought our first container, and it has made its way into a lot of things. But this sauce, was originally made as a pizza sauce. A friend wanted a pizza with Korean style toppings. Now obviously pizza is not Korean, so the whole thing, though delicious, was by no means authentic. But it meant that we had this rich, thick sauce to use up. It essentially went into everything. I added it to meat for burritos, it went into a stir fry, and it has become a favourite addition to my morning eggs on toast. For more info about Gochujang, check out this excellent article.
Sun Dried Tomato Gochujang Sauce
Equipment
- Blender or Immersion blender
Ingredients
- 1 270ml Jar of Sun Dried Tomatoes in Oil I like the extra oiliness in this recipe, so I use the oil packed tomatoes for it.
- 3 tbsp Gochujang Paste
- 1/4 cup Ketchup
- 2 tsps Sesame Oil
- 1/2 tsp Chipotle Powder
- Enough water to loosen to the consistency you want
Instructions
- Combine all the ingredients except the water in a blender and begin to blend. Once it becomes too thick, begin adding the water little by little to thin to the consistency you want.
- Store in the fridge in a sealed container for up to two weeks.
If you try out these sauces, let me know how you like them and which was your favourite! Enjoy!
LizaLeigh
Great food for thought for next month when my tomatoes are fully grown and ripening! I would have sun-dried tomato pesto to the list, one of my favorites. I love them in olive oil but it takes a lot of olive oil and of course you can store the dried ones a lot longer. However they of course remind me of apples and how quickly they get tiny when you dry so you have to have a pretty good load up tomatoes in the garden to allocate to this haha…
That’s true! We go into our garden season with the plan for drying tomatoes, and so plant a lot! Haha I’ve also found that varieties with thicker flesh do better with drying and don’t lose as much size