Had a shit ton of tomatoes that I wanted to try dehydrating. Cut them up into 1/4" to 1/2" slices, put them on the racks in the new dehydrator, and 16 hours later at 145°F I'll be damned if they didn't turn out fucking amazing. Tried some out tonight with dinner, and they were fucking tasty. Super concentrated flavours. Bought some food-grade desicant packs for storage, just in case there's something left in there. Next up are a bunch of herbs from the garden.
Awesome! I've got my machine coming soon. I'm really looking forward to dried tomatoes. They should last for months in the fridge, or you can freeze them. Mold would be the give away that they went bad.
Found out today that I seemed to have missed removing 2 Styrofoam packing pieces. Wups. Didn't seem to impact anything, and didn't melt...
@Nettdata were your dried tomatoes chewy and pliable or more crisp and breakable? I am going to do a batch today and will copy your temp and time if they ended up chewy for you.
There was a bit of a mix... I was not fully consistent with my thickness in prep, so the thicker ones had some definite chew, almost date-like consistency (2 out of 100?). The really thin ones were dry enough that you could shatter them into powder, but the vast majority were just barely still chewy. Overall they seemed to be less chewy than store-bought dried tomatoes in a bag. I figured I'd just see how it went, and went 145°F for 14 hours, then ended up doing another 3 hours on top of that for most of them.
Good to know about your process. I was reading about a month ago about it, but they recommended using a paste type of tomato and moisture makes all the difference. I think I saw your pic with slicer type tomatoes which is mostly what I used today. The blog I read says that if you end up with super dry ones like you describe, you can grind them into a powder with your coffee grinder or spice grinder for seasoning in soups or whatnot. I am aiming for chewy, I started mine at 145F, 12hrs to check them. I tried to be kinda consistent with thickness but still ended up with a few smaller pieces, so I can pull those out early if needed. I did crowd my trays a bit, but still only used 4/6 trays for 1 yellow brandywine, 11 beefsteak, and 4 san marzanos. I'm excited to see how this one ends! Next up! Peppers.
Yeah, I had a couple trays of Romas and the rest were Beefsteak. I was really happy with how the beefsteak came out. I also tried a row with some salt, pepper, and a few drops of balsamic on it... turned out really tasty.
I processed tomatoes today, dehydrated some and made a couple jars of plain sauce. I have another batch almost ripe and a ton on the vine. Bring it! Tomorrow I'll be working on jalapenoes and shredding zuchinni for the freezer. If I can get my shit together I'll be dehydrating a batch and making cowboy candy.
Very nice! How did your temps/times work out for you? Went out for dinner with a friend tonight and he surprised me with a huge plastic shopping bag full of jalapenos. (He knew that my hot pepper plants didn't take this year). Apparently his uncle has a farm where he leases land to growers, and the pepper growers already picked over all the jalapenos he wanted, so he went out after and scooped up what must be a couple bushels of pretty ripe (reddish) jalapenos. They're not hot, as this variety is canned/jarred and sold, and all the heat is added during that canning process to maintain heat consistency, but man, they are very tasty. Not quite sure if I want to try and dehydrate those puppies in the house or not... but I'll probably wait until I get back from camping this weekend to do anything with them. Still, pretty happy to have a bunch of surprise jalapenos this year.
These will finish up early in the morning sometime so I'll have to see when I wake up. TBD. That makes sense about the jalapenos heat level for commercial purposes, though I never thought about it. The heat of mine varied a bit this season but in the end they ended up hot as hell. I can barely eat them. Having friends with gardens or access to crops are the best. I trade some stuff with a neighbor. She gave me a couple butternut squash and I've given her fresh and pickled peppers.
Actually scratch that. I checked them one last time before heading to bed and pulled some of them out after around 7or 8 hrs at 145. Some I pulled were somewhere between pliable and shatter, some were more pliable. I reduced the temp to 130 and put the reminder on for 3.5 more hours. Some of the pieces seemed fairly close to done so I don't want them to go too fast. I taste tested and am pretty happy with how they have turned out so far.
Fist frost here is Oct 9. We have temps below 50 for lows and highs in the 70s and low 80s. Bonnie plants says fruits are unlikely to continue ripening when exposed to temps below 50. Should I be harvesting my green tomatoes now?
I have. We've hit single digits (°C) here now and it's enough to kill off the leaves, even without frost.
Alright, I'll have to get it done over the next few days. I've been picking anything with a modest amount of color but I'll go ahead and get it all in.
I’ve got half a dozen beefsteak tomatoes, only one of which is even starting to ripen. Temps here are getting into the 50s at night so I’ve picked them. I’ve got them all together in a closed paper bag in the kitchen to try to ripen them. Any other tips you guys have for force-ripening them?
I find if they just sit on a flat surface, the bottoms will rot out. I keep them on a drying rack of some sort, on the island in the kitchen, that gets some sun from a side window. Seems to do not too badly.
I have read that adding a ripening banana or apple to the bag will accelerate the process as they give off ethylene gas while ripening which will speed up the ripening of the tomatoes