In September I canned about a zillion tomatoes. I did stewed tomatoes, tomato sauce and tomato soup. I used tomatoes that I purchased from road side stands, some from my garden and some from friends and neighbors, I never turn down free produce! Once I was done canning I still had tomatoes in my garden and a few from my Mom’s garden. So instead of canning little batches I decided to dry them. I also pick all the green tomatoes off my vines the first part of October when we had our first hard freeze and as they have been slowly ripening I have been drying those too.
Drying tomatoes is a simple process. I just washed them and cut them in half. My tomatoes were Roma’s a nice meaty paste tomato, meaning there isn’t a lot of water, perfect for drying. If you are using bigger slicing type tomatoes, then you would need to cut them into 1 inch slices, you can also dry cherry tomatoes, just poke a hole in them, so the water can escape and they can be dried whole.
It took about 2 days to dry the tomatoes crispy. In order to grind them into a powder (which was my goal) they need to be good and crisp. If you plan on keeping them in oil, they don’t have to be crispy, just nice and rubbery.
I dried over 100 pounds of tomatoes, and they all fit in two gallon jars and a couple of pickle jars.
I then ground up the dried tomatoes in my blender, nice and fine to create a powder. They compacted down quite a bit in powder form, wonderful if you don’t have a lot of storage space and want to preserve food.
I left a few whole tomatoes, to add to soups and stews throughout the winter.
Here is the finished product.
I am figuring (I am not an expert so this is just my own thoughts) that if oxygen packs were added to the jar, this powder would store for several years.
Now, how does one use this powder?
Well, here you go:
To one cup powdered tomatoes, add the following….
Tomato Paste:
1 3/4 cup water and 1/2 tsp sugar
Tomato Juice:
3-5 cups water or to desired thickness. Salt and Pepper to taste
Tomato Sauce:
3 cups water and 1/2 tsp sugar
Tomato Soup:
3/4 cup water, 1/2 cup milk. Season to taste.
That is a REALLY cool idea. Then you can store it dry, and just add what needs to be added to make the tomatoe product you want.
I LIKE THIS….
That is cool! I'm sure one way to store it would be by using your FoodSaver and glass jars to keep it fresh. Really COOL! Now, if I only had a dehydrator…
Why didn't I know about this before? Awesome.
I like this idea. Ii still haven't tried with all my tomatoes in my freezer. But I am glad to see pictures maybe this will give me incentive. LOL
Erika
I never knew that this is the way of drying tomatoes nor did I realize you grind the dried tomatoes into a powder! I have to make a note of this for next year's tomatoes. Thank you for sharing that.
Also, welcome back!
Cheryl
goodnufranch.blogspot.com
How many batches did that take on the dehydrator? I wish we had picked our tomatoes, better.
It was probably 8-10 batches, I swear your dehydrator has been going non-stop since I borrowed it. I think I need to buy you a new one, I have used this so much!
I wasted the vast majority of our tomatoes this year waiting for enough of them to ripen at a time to make sauce. Did you peel and seed the tomatoes or just cut them in half? Next year I will absolutely do this. Thank you!
No, I did not seed and peel them. Just cut them in half and dried them. When you run them through the blender it all turns to powder.
What fabulous ideas for preserving tomatoes! I'm going to use some of them at the end of our summer.
Kate
That is AWESOME!!!!