Putting tomatoes in the dryer

[catsittingstill]

Nothing much to talk about today--trip in to Knoxville to copy stuff and hit a bookstore (got Days of the Dead, Barbara Hambly's latest :-), and get toys for Kip's (our) nieces. So I'm going to talk about my food dehydrator (familiarly referred to as the dryer) instead.

I just got the dryer a couple of weeks ago and it hasn't been turned off for more than 24 hours since. Peaches and tomatoes are local, and in season, and now I can buy 30 pounds of them and be confident they won't go bad before I get to them. I'm planning on taking advantage of other local produce as it comes into season, and looking forward to having stores of dried food through the winter. The peaches in particular gladden my heart; they have such beautiful color, jewel-bright and rich, like autumn leaves. I suppose they won't stay bright, since I didn't sulfur them (it seemed like a lot of trouble (and a certain amount of risk) to go to over a cosmetic issue), but I'll gloat over them while the color lasts.

I'm amused by how much the tomatoes decrease in volume. What started as 10 pounds of tomatoes will fit into 2 or 3 sandwich bags when they're dried. After a while the sandwich bags start to build up, though. For a while I was keeping the dried food in the freezer--even dried food keeps longer if it's frozen. But I was getting to the point where I couldn't fit a tub of ice cream in anymore, so I got some mason jars and have been filling them up and storing them in the closet. There's still lots of room in the closet :-)

Which reminds me, Debbie, you were saying you wanted to learn to dry tomatoes. There's nothing to it, really. Wash the tomatoes, cut out the core if it bothers you, and slice them about 3/8ths or 1/2 inch thick. (I discard the tiny outer slices that are all skin on one side, mostly because the skin is less pleasant to eat than the rest of the tomato.) The more even the slice-thickness the more the whole load tends to get properly dry at the same time so you don't find yourself doing a lot of sorting and consolidating. I cut them into wedges the first few times, which seems to take longer, perhaps because the tomatoes dry only through their cut surface area, not through their skin, and the wedges have more skin per volume. But aside from the time issue, the wedges seem to come out fine. Spread the slices or wedges out so they nearly touch but don't overlap. They're dry when they're stiff and leathery, or crisp, with no soft spots--in about 20 hours (maybe faster if you live in a less humid place than Tennessee). They drip, so it might be worth putting one of the fruit leather plates on the bottom rack since it's easier to clean than the heater. I only wash the racks every other or every third time; the dried juice on them from previous loads does not seem to affect the taste of the next load.

I've made fruit leather too--mostly peach leather. But I must be drying it too much because once it cools down it's brittle and tends to shatter if I try to unroll it. I would like to make fruit leather for a hiking snack, but I guess I need more practice. I've also dried pureed tomato--which makes for a bright red brittle cracker-like substance with a powerful tomato jolt. But again it's too brittle to be a practical hand snack. It might make a good camping condiment, though.

Comments

[trystel.livejournal.com]

You make me want to dig out my dehydrator and dust it off again, Cat! I went through the same frantic pace of drying that you did, but it was about four years ago. Haven't touched it since we moved back to Washington over two years ago. Had fun, for sure! I never tried tomatoes. Did just about every fruit I could find, though. What would you say your favorite tasting fruit is? The peaches? I loved dried mango...dusted with a bit of powdered sugar. Mmmm!

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

So far the only fruits I've done are peaches, bananas and some apples. My favorite is the peaches. Of commercial dried fruit my favorite is pears, followed closely by peaches. (I haven't tried drying pears yet because I can't find any cheap ones.) I like dried mango too, but mango has a substance in its skin (and a very little bit in its juice) akin to the stuff the causes poision oak. I'm very sensitive to poison oak, so I'm probably never going to slice a large number of mangoes--when I'm slicing fruit on this scale the juice gets all over *everything*.

[spiritdancer]

Sounds like you're keeping the dehydrator busy :-)

Other things you might try - can't say for sure how well they'd work for drying, but squash and zucchini are in season now (you would likely find almost anyone growing them looking for a way to get rid of 'em about now). Apple season is coming soon; grapes are also coming on, if someone is growing them in your area.

Other things too look at besides drying: home canning is one of the first things to come to mind (I canned quite a bit of salsa, spagetti sauce, pizza sauce, applesauce, apple pie filling, honey-spiced peaches, etc last year). Pickling is another way to put up a fair bit. I'm experimenting with making brine cucumber dill pickles (as opposed to pickles made with vinegar). And since the cucumbers are doing quite well (still), the next batch or two should be either bread and butter or sweet pickles. (I've already got about 15 or 16 quarts of dills put up)

Have I mentioned that I don't eat fresh cucumbers (don't like the taste or mouth-feel)? I planted them with the intention of feeding them to Daniel - he's working in Boston, hence the pickling.

My tomatoes have just started bearing (I picked the first 3 Brandywines just before heading up to Torcon last weekend). The plants look great, and are trying to climb up the side of the house (and over everything else in that bed). Mom's told me I should plan to come up to her place to start collecting apples soon.

Ah for more time and more space in the garden :-)

_M_

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I'll look into the sqash and zuccini--the drying book says they're only "poor to fair" but it sounds like it can be done and it's worth a try. I love zuccini. I haven't tried canning yet--partly because it was so hot and humid earlier on that I wasn't very interested in boiling things, but largely because I've never done it before, and I understand there are some serious safety risks if you don't do it right. With drying if the food goes bad, it usually just gets moldy and you can see that and throw it away.

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

Cat, sweetie, you live in a small town in Tennesee now. Somewhere within five miles of you is an 80 year old lady who doesn't get nearly enough visitors these days who would be more than happy to tell you more about canning than you'd ever need to know, along with any number of entertaining stories about her life which could turn into 5 or 6 really good songs.

You just gotta go find her. She'll be glad you came. :)

[spiritdancer]

With canning food, if the color is off, or the lid bulges, or it smells off when you open it, you throw it out :-) (or, in the case of my second batch of pickles, if there's mold growing on top, throw it out!)

A couple of resources:

The Ball Blue Book - I found mine at WalMart (and the local one has lots of copies still, so let me know if you can't find it). Lots of good info on safe home preservation (including canning, freezing, and drying).

rec.food.preserving on Usenet. Lots of discussion there on making pickles at the moment :-)

and, last but not least, the National Center for Home Food Preservation, hosted at the University of Georgia at http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/

Have fun!
_M_

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

You and autographedcat both have good points about learning to can, and I may give it a try someday. Right now the dryer is keeping me pretty busy though, so I will probably put off any experiments in that direction for a year or so. :-)

[kitanzi.livejournal.com]

That sounds fun and tasty. Casually looking for fruit leather recipies online, it looks like most put some honey into the fruit puree before drying it. You may have already tried that, but if not it might make a difference in how brittle it is?

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

well, you know, it might. Hmm. I haven't tried it yet, partially because Kip and I are both trying to lose weight and I have adopted a "don't put sugar on it unless it's too sour" rule, and partially because, well, it's one more thing to get out and clean up after and partially because the drying book pointed out that honey has a strong flavor which can overpower the fruit.

I had thought my problem was overdrying it, but maybe I should try a batch with honey. Hmmm. I'm waiting for apples to get cheap--then I might try a honey-lemon-apple fruit leather experiment :-)