Although
we don’t have a need for a big vegetable garden with the kids all grown and
gone, I still find myself planting carrots and cucumbers and spinach in my
flower beds. We like garden veggies even
though those we get at the grocery store are almost as good.
EXCEPT
for tomatoes. There is just no comparing
a flavorless, hard grocery store tomato to a sun ripened juicy ripe beauty
still warm from the summer sun.
The
problem becomes what to do with the extras which accumulate after we’ve eaten
our fill and given a bunch away. I’ve
canned them, juiced them, frozen them and sauced them and have always decided—more
trouble than it’s worth.
Then
DH decided to try putting them in our food dehydrator. Although it took quite a while to dry the
juice out, they had a concentrated flavor and color very much like the super
expensive sun dried tomatoes in gourmet cooking. Plus they kept for months and months just
tossed in a zip-lock bag ready to break up and sprinkle in spaghetti or pizza
sauce or just eat like chips.
Now
I needed to grow more tomatoes. So this
spring I ripped out a few yards of lawn and added room for five more tomato
plants.
I
have to put the baby plants in little wall-o-water greenhouses until the middle
of June to keep them safe from frost.
Barring
some kind of weird weather we should have lots and lots of tomatoes in a few
months to eat fresh and dry for later.
There
are plenty of places on the internet with info on how to dry tomatoes.
TOMATO
PREPARATION
Cut out the stem and scar and the hard portion of core lying under it. Slice the tomato into quarter inch
horizontal slices.
Arrange
the pieces on each rack of a food dehydrator so that air can circulate,
preferably with the pieces not touching each other. Sprinkle the tomatoes with
sea salt, kosher salt and/or some spices like basil if you prefer.
Turn
the dehydrator on and let it run for eight to ten hours. Turn the slices over about half way through the
process. If your food drier has a thermostat, set it
for 140 degrees F.
The
amount of time it takes depends on the water content of the tomatoes, the
thickness of the slices, and how well the air is able to circulate around them.
When done, the tomatoes should be flexible, not brittle. The pieces will be leathery
with a deep red color, without feeling sticky.
Let
the tomatoes cool to room temperature then put them in zip-lock bags. Don't overfill
the bags. Squeeze out the extra air.
Store the bags in a very cool, dry place.
