PRESERVING THE HARVEST - DEHYDRATED TOMATOES
Without preservation, the harvest will be wasted.
Growing food is one thing, but using it all is another. Unless you eat all that you can fresh and give away or sell the rest, chances are that you'll need to save some for later. There are a lot of different methods for all sorts of produce preservation, and in this post I'll just share one simple one for tomatoes.
EASY, EASY TOMATO PRESERVATION
This one is extremely simple. If you can slice a tomato and press a button, you can dehydrate tomatoes. In fact, you can even make a solar dehydrator (which is on our to do list) and then you can even skip the "press a button" step!
Electric dehydrators are readily available in many locations. We needed a new one, so I bought this one for $40 USD at a local store. Basically, they heat a coil below the produce which is then used to dry (dehydrate) the produce. As long as the pieces of raw food are spread out enough, the hot air can work its way in-between the pieces and remove the moisture from them.
This was our first batch for the year, and we are very excited. We are getting a lot of tomatoes almost daily from our garden, and we only have eight plants producing at the moment. To harvest over 9# of tomatoes from just eight plants in one day is a rewarding experience, and preserving our harvest makes sure that it doesn't turn into a disappointment.
One remarkable thing about dehydrated tomatoes is how sweet they become. I was completely blown away at the sweetness the first time that I tasted one, and it's a flavor that keeps me coming back for more. If you've never tried these, you really should!
As always, I'm @papa-pepper and here's the proof:
proof-of-dehydrated-tomato
Until next time…
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Oh yeah! Dried homegrown tomatoes are incredible. Even though fresh food has generally more "life force" to it from the water content, I love how certain sweetness/acidity/bitterness really comes to life when produce is dried. Those are gonna be super flavorful!
KInd of remind me of mangoes I had.
I did put them in freezer for later use.
I once dehydrated tomatoes with a smidge of garlic powder and italian seasoning. They made very nice treats.
Awesome!! I want a nice dehydrator. Growing up we had a quarter acre lot, and lots of fruit trees. My dad loves fruit trees. But instead of using a dehydrator all the time, my dad built these contraptions that we could put on the top of the roof. And then burned sulfur to keep the bugs away. It was awesome. We dehydrated apricots and apples. And made some amazing fruit leather too, although we used the dehydrator for that I believe, hard to remember back that far. lol
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Those look awesome. there are so many things you can make with delicious tomatoes to preserve them such as relish, pasta sauce, ketchup, the list is endless ( well long anyway 🤣) your toms look GORGEOUS 🌈🦋💛🌴❤️Resteemed ( the post not the toms )
That is usually the route we take, Canning the tomatoes, I usually end up with Tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, vegetable soup. I've never tried making ketchup before. New bucket list item.
My favorite is Salsa and Chili Starter. It's how I save my peppers. They are basically the same I just add a lot more chili peppers to the chili starter, and I learned to use pint jars for the salsa unless you eat a lot of salsa.
Thanks @sallybeth23! I agree, we've got a lot more planned for our tomatoes!
Wonderful! Do share those plans with us 😉
I used to enjoy the Ronco food dehydrator commercials, that's awesome, I always seem to let a lot of excess go to waste, any suggestions for eggplants?
We like to dehydrate our cherry tomatoes that have been halved. No need for a solar oven, just put them on your dashboard with the windows cracked. Haha!
I've done that with Stinging Nettles and Peppers, but not cherry tomatoes! Great Idea!
Wow! Never really knew tomato can be preserved by dehydration and retains a good taste
I will certainly try this out
howdy @papa-pepper! I had no idea that dehydrated tomatoes were sweet, I wasn't interested in them until I found that out! great job!
Yeah, well worthwhile to try! I really like them!