Turn sad winter tomatoes into delicious chips bursting with tomato flavor.

Tomatoes are sliced into thick rounds, then are slowly baked over several hours. Turn tomatoes into salty, delicious tomato chips for an amazing snack that’s low in carbs, too.

Tomato chips are the best thing that could happen to winter tomatoes.

I typically never buy produce out of season. I live in southern California, so I’m blessed with warm to semi-warm temperatures year-round and an abundance of produce suppliers that benefit from our weather. That being said, tomatoes are the one item of produce I never buy during the deep Los Angeles winter (*shudders in 60 degrees*). To me, winter tomatoes are a wisp, a sad shell of what they are during the summer. If you couldn’t already tell, I take my tomatoes seriously.

Which is why I tried to find a way to ease my little tomato-loving heart during those cold, cold months (ahem, weeks). Besides roasting them whole with lots of salt and olive oil, making tomato chips out of tomatoes is the best thing you could be doing to your bland, much less juicy winter tomatoes.

Also, if you’re reading this during the summer with tomatoes overflowing your garden and your neighbors are already sick of taking your leftovers, 1) lucky you! and 2) make these tomato chips! It’s a perfect way to use up that summer influx of tomatoes.

These are served with a homemade lemon-garlic aioli, which is a fancy word for mayonnaise. Well, technically not, but pretty much. And it’s delicious. So yes, dip your healthy-ish tomato chips into mayonnaise. It’s all about balance.

Can you whisk while pouring? If so, you can make aioli. Aioli is prepared by making an emulsion. In other words, you’re slowly binding two things together. In this case, we’re binding oil (olive or vegetable) into egg yolk, minced garlic, lemon juice, and lemon zest.

How to make tomato chips in the oven

You could very well make these tomato chips in a dehydrator, but for those of us lacking fancy gadgets, the oven works perfectly. Once you bring your tomatoes on home, or pull them from your garden (jealous), give them a good rinse and pat them as dry as you can. Slice them into rounds about 1/8-inch thick. The thinner, the better. Before the next step, pat both sides dry with some paper towels or a lint-free dish towel. The drier they are going into the over, the quicker and easier it’ll be for these tomatoes to turn into chips.

Brush olive oil over both sides. Anyone who knows me knows I go buckwild for salt. I’ll put it on anything. However, go a little easier on the salt (and pep) for these tomato chips. In the oven, the tomatoes shrink up and you’ll find that a normal quantity of salt turns out way too salty.

Place your seasoning tomato slices on a cooling rack placed over a sheet pan. If you don’t have a cooling rack, place them directly on the sheet pan. You’ll have to flip them with tongs halfway through cooking to get them crispy, but do what you gotta do.

Pop them into an oven preheated to 275, and wait. Mine typically turn into chips at around the 2 1/2 hour mark. If you placed your tomatoes directly on the sheet pan, flip them at around 1 hour or a little over an hour. Keep an eye on them after about 2 hours. Most ovens have hot spots, and I tend to check up on them and remove the tomatoes that are crisp enough to be chips.

Once you take them out of the oven, you can tell they’re ready if they’re brown to deep brown around one side or both sides. Try prodding them – if they move around very easily and are still distinguishably soft and tomato-like, pop them back in for another 15 to 30 minutes. You’ll also need to cool them at least 15 minutes for these tomato chips to actually be crunchy. Serve them as soon as they harden. Make these a few hours ahead of time and they’ll still be crispy. Store them in an airtight container, but know that every passing hour is crispiness lost! (They’ll still be delicious.)

What kind of tomatoes should I use?

You can use any of tomato for this recipe, really, but I gravitate towards the Roma tomatoes at my local supermarket. Roma tomatoes are really not the crown jewel of tomatoes by any means, and that’s exactly why I like them for this recipe. They’re typically not as juicy as most other tomatoes can be, which works perfectly, as the drier the tomato is when it goes into the oven, the faster and easier they’ll crisp up.

Roma tomatoes are also typically the cheapest. I’ve seen them go for as little as 69 cents a pound where I live. That means you can stock up on a few pounds of tomatoes and have an entire tomato chip party. So, Roma tomatoes it is!

If you somehow find yourself with leftover tomato chips, these make a delicious salad and soup topping.

Variations

• This recipe just calls for salt and pepper, but try parmesan for a cheesy twist (add parmesan on top of these chips when they’re almost done, and broil for 5 minutes), honey and red chili flakes for a hot honey take, or za’atar for a Middle Eastern tomato chip!