Tomato Powder

Roasted Tomato Powder

I am way too frugal to throw away anything that could be useful, like skins of fruits and vegetables.  While peeling all those tomatoes, I saved the skins and the seedy pulp.  

Save your skins as you peel the tomatoes

Dehydrating tomato skins and pulp is so easy.

Simply spread out the skin and pulp pieces on a dehydrator tray. 

Roasted Tomato Skins

Dehydrated Tomato

Dry at 125 degrees overnight.  When dry the skins and pulp should be very crisp and brittle.  

Very Large Jars of Dehydrated Tomato Skin and Pulp

Simply whirl the dried tomatoes in a spice or coffee grinder to make the powder.

I choose to store my dehydrated tomato in large pieces, powdering only enough at one time for what is needed in a recipe.  

Yummy Roasted Tomato Powder

When making Roasted Marinara with Zucchini, I drizzled the tomatoes with olive oil before roasting.  I dried these skins on a separate tray from the other tomato skins.  These skins dried crisp and crackly like the plain skins, but they had an oily film on them. Because of the addition of olive oil, this powder is not shelf stable and must be stored in the freezer.

All powder made from tomatoes that were boiled in water to remove skins or broiled without olive oil may safely be stored on the shelf in a vacuum sealed jar.

Tomato powder has many uses.  It can be used to thicken sauces, add flavor to soups or rice dishes, or mixed with other powdered vegetables to make a vegetable seasoning.  I am sure you can think of even more uses for this yummy powder.




See this Tomato Powder post and others like it at:
From the Farm Blog Hop  

Dehydrated Pears

We love pears.

Fresh, dried, canned, juice, jam, sauce, syrup, etc.  Yes, we love pears.

So out of our 40+ pounds of juicy Bartlett pears recently received, we decided to dehydrate a few to snack on like apple chips.

To prepare pears for drying, wash, core and peel.

An effective way to core a pear is to first cut in half.  Then use knife to cut v-shape under stem and blossom area.  Then use pointed spoon to scoop out core.  Everything should cleanly lift out in one piece.  The stringy parts of the pear are around the stem and core. The grainy parts are around the core and blossom.  By carefully removing these parts, most unwanted textures are discarded.

I core first, then peel.  I find it easier to handle the pear while coring with the skin still on.

Very much used mandolin.

Slice pear into 1/4 inch slices.  Let pear slices drop into bowl of Fruit Fresh solution to protect from browning.  Follow the directions on Fruit Fresh label.

Place pear slices on dehydrator trays.  Dry at 135 degrees until leathery.  Upon cooling pear slices should become very crisp.  If they do not break when bent, dry longer.

If you can resist munching them all immediately, vacuum seal in jars and store.

Potato Dices

Honeyville Farms Dehydrated Potato Dices cost $9.99 for 28 ounces.  That is $.35 an ounce.  Honeyville Farms is a great company that puts out a great product.  But... I can make my own at home for less.

Here at Saltbush Flats we make our own dehydrated potato dices at about 1/3 the cost.

I diced 8 pounds of russet potatoes using the mandolin pictured above.

Then blanched them for 5 minutes in boiling water.  See previous post on Dehydrated Potato Slices here.

Placed them on the dehydrator trays and dried them for about 6 hours.









Eight pounds of dehydrated potato dices weighed in at 18 ounces and were about 1/4 of the original size.

The potato were $1.98 for 10 pounds.  That equals $1.58 for 8 pounds.  Add in a minimal amount of electricity to run the dehydrator and we are at $2.00 or less for my potato dices.

Cost per ounce is $.11.







But the fun does not stop there.  Rancher Roy loves french fries.  So I made 1 pound of potatoes into french fries just for him.




After blanching for 5 minutes, I flash froze these fries on cooling racks.  It was much easier to carry the cooling rack to the freezer on the baking sheet than to carry the rack itself.

Cost of 1 pound of fries is about $.25.













Here at Saltbush Flats we are frugal.  We dehydrate, can, and freeze all we are able as we get closer and closer to self-sufficiency.




This post is part of these blog hops
The Homeacre Hop     Homesteaders Blog Hop     From the Farm Blog Hop

Dehydrated Potatoes - He Ate One... Almost.

I have some potatoes I need to use.  The dehydrator seemed to be the answer.