How to remove salt from sun-dried tomatoes

Question

I have a large packet of sun-dried tomatoes, the type that are preserved dry with salt rather than the type sold in jars covered with olive or sunflower oil. It's a large packet so I don't want to throw them out but they are much saltier than the ones I usually buy, the packet says 11% salt. Even after pouring boiling water over them and leaving them to soak for 30 minutes (as the packet recommends) leaves them too salty for my palette. Any ideas would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Cook them in dishes.

I use sun dried tomatoes in my go-to pasta sauce. While mine are usually in oil, I have used others in the past.

I suggest thinking of them in the same way as anchovies. On their own, they can be near inedible, but when cooked in a dish, they almost dissolve into pure flavor. The same can be done with your tomatoes: After a while, cooking lets the salt migrate into the remaining dish, provided there’s enough liquid. Just adjust the salt as needed.

If you want sun dried tomatoes on their own, get another, less salty kind that suits the use case.
Sometimes all soaking isn’t worth the fuss in my opinion, especially as soaking (which would be able to dissolve the salt) kind of negates why they were dried in the first place and you would probably lose flavor. Plus, if you tried doing the whole pack in one go, you could end up with no longer shelf stable ex-dried tomatoes.

Answer 2

Two potential solutions:

1. Buy a different brand, one that's not packed in salt. Most sun-dried tomatoes are air dried and have minimal salt content, even if they're not packed in oil.
2. Soak these the way you would salt cod: in the fridge, for a day or more, changing the water 2-3 times. This should remove the salt, but might also turn them to mush.