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.
Total time: 6 hours
Makes as many as you can fit on the grill
- Tomatoes—that’s the only ingredient
Special Tools:
- Grill topper (or something to keep them from falling through the grates when they shrink)
Pop the stems off the tomatoes and stab them 3 or 4 times with the tip of a sharp knife so moisture can escape.
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.
Recipes excerpted from “The Meathead Method: A BBQ Hall of Famer’s Secrets and Science on BBQ, Grilling, and Outdoor Cooking with 114 Recipes” copyright 2025 by AmazingRibs.com. Photography copyright 2025 by AmazingRibs.com. Reproduced by permission of Harvest, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
