Making Dehydrated Tomato Powder
Easily Make Tomato Powder
Want to amp up the flavor to your spaghetti? Or give your meatloaf a little oomf? Adding a little tomato powder could do the trick. If you are canning tomatoes and have been discarding the tomato skins, stop! You can dehydrate tomato skins and make powder to enhance the flavor of your favorite dishes.
And don’t discard what you run through the food mill. We made dehydrated tomato powder with that also. The only thing we don’t keep is the tomato core.
Be sure to add recipe to your tomato and other favorite canning recipes.
What Type of Tomatoes Do You Use?
We used regular round canning tomatoes to make tomato powder. You can also use plum or Roma tomatoes to make powder. You also need to use ripe tomatoes for the best flavor.
What Do You Do With The Fresh Tomatoes?
You can can whole tomatoes, make tomato sauce, stewed tomatoes, tomato juice and tomato paste. You can also crush them and serve them in chili.
How Much Powder Do You Use?
Tomato powder adds an intense tomato flavor to your dish, so you don’t need a lot. A bushel of tomatoes dehydrates down to a cup of powder. Our skins were about 8 cups before we dehydrated them
What Do You Use Tomato Powder For?
Add the powder into soup, tomato soup. Add into meatloaf (or on top). Sprinkle into your tomato sauce when making spaghetti.
How Do You Make A Fine Powder?
The powder can be made with a blender or food processor and coffee grinder. We have found that our food processor only grinds to flakes. A coffee grinder takes the flakes and make the powder.
Can I Make Tomato Paste?
If you want to make tomato paste, that is made from the inside of the tomato, without seeds. You reduce the tomato juices into a paste and can it.
Why Do You Use A Coffee Grinder?
We found that using the food processor was great to take the large pieces of tomato skins and grind them into flakes. It was not making a fine powder like we wanted for tomato powder. I had been told or read someone that coffee grinders were good for making powder. The flakes were turned into a nice powder that will allow you to add tomato flavor into your favorite dishes.
Homemade Tomato Powder
Ingredients
- tomato skins we used half bushel for 1 cup of powder
Instructions
- Make sure you wash and blanch your tomatoes to get the skins.
- When peeling your tomatoes, place the discarded skins in a separate bowl.
- Place the tomato skins in a colander to separate excess water.
- Place the tomato skins on the dehydrator tray on a single thin layer.
- Place the trays of tomato skins into the dehydrator and set the temperature to 155F/68C.
- The tomato skins will need to process for 8-12 hours, until they are crisp and dry.
- While the tomato skins process, work on the rest of your tomatoes (juice, stewed etc)
- If you run the tomatoes through the food processor, you can dehydrate the discarded portion of the tomato as noted above.
- Once the tomatoes are dry and crisp, you can remove from the dehydrator and place into a large bow.
- Place the dry tomato skins into a food processor and chop into pieces. This will look like flakes.
- Process all the tomatoes, it make take a few rounds in the food processor to complete.
- Place the tomato flakes into the coffee grinder and grind into a powder.
- Place the powder into a jar with a lid.
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