Tomatoes are a staple in the American diet; they go in all of our favorite recipes, they are a favorite of gardeners to grow, and best of all they are a healthy food. I’ve done another post on tomatoes that you can read here. However, this post will get you thinking about tomatoes in a whole new way. Tomato powder is so versatile; you can make spaghetti sauce, ketchup, tomato soup, BBQ sauce, pizza sauce, and Mexican dishes all with this great dehydrated food. Not to mention it’s just a handy item to have on standby for thickening stews and making your own instant soups. Let me show you what I did.
How To Dehydrate Tomatoes
Start with ripe tomatoes. Roma tomatoes are best for dehydrating but these tomatoes on the vine were on sale.
Wash your tomatoes.
Core your tomatoes.
Slice your tomatoes.
You can use any size tomatoes. I had some of these grape tomatoes so I thought I would throw them in.
Load up your trays.
I started out with about 20 lbs of tomatoes and filled all nine trays in my nine tray Excalibur Dehydrator.
Set the temperature to 125ᵒF and dehydrate for 12 to 18 hours.
Here is what the tomatoes look like dehydrated.
Here is what the grape tomatoes look like.
At this point you can place the tomatoes in a high-powdered blender or a spice grinder to make tomato powder. You could also store these tomatoes as-is and add them to stews, soups or casseroles. You might break them up a bit before you add them to a recipe, but if you didn’t want to make a powder these tomatoes would be very useful in your pantry.
I had some tomatoes from last year’s garden that I kept stuffing in the freezer because I could never get enough of them ripe at one time to can. I did intend to can when I defrosted them but I never got around to it. Instead I decided to make tomato powder.
This is what the tomatoes look like right out of the freezer.
I left them in the fridge for a few days to defrost. This what they look like defrosted.
I drained off the water before I prepared them to make tomato powder.
How To Make Tomato Powder
Take your tomatoes and blend them up in a blender.
Now, I love my Excalibur Dehydrator, but I don’t like to put liquid on the dehydrator sheets (not pictured). They have no lip and things can spill. So I use the fruit roll up sheets that are actually designed for the round dehydrators. You lose some real estate but I’m fine with that because it doesn’t spill over.
Fill your trays.
I just place the fruit roll up tray right on the Excalibur Dehydrator trays.
I had a few tomatoes that were not quite done from the previous day so I placed them in with the fruit roll up trays. I laid the tray down to grab another tray and I thought it made a pretty picture. Yes, I take too many pictures!
This is what the dehydrated blended tomatoes look when they are done.
They actually come out of the trays in disks like this.
Break up the disks into pieces and place in a high powdered blender, a high powered food processor or my favorite: a little coffee/spice grinder. This would be a great application for your Wonder Mill Junior Deluxe too.
There you have it, tomato powder.
You could do this entire process with canned tomatoes but you might lose some taste. I recently did a taste test with fresh, frozen and canned corn. Also, if you buy canned tomatoes they are already preserved so there is no need to dehydrate them unless they are close to expiring or you’re worried about BPA.
How To Store Dehydrated Tomatoes and Tomato Powder
I place my tomatoes and tomato powder in Mason jars.
Before I add the tomatoes to my food storage I vacuum pack it with my FoodSaver in Mason jars with a jar sealer attachment. This is a half gallon sized jar.
I also do the same thing with the tomato powder.
The attachment also comes in a smaller size for regular mouth jars.
Label and put away.
How To Reconstitute Tomato Paste
To reconstitute tomato powder, add one tablespoon of powder to a small bowl.
Add two tablespoons water.
It looks like tomato paste.
Here is a closer look. So the formula is 1 part tomato powder to 2 parts water.
Since I used fresh tomatoes from my garden they taste super sweet. My husband said it tastes just like ketchup so I think I might mix some of this up next time we have a need for ketchup and see how it goes.
Can you think of other ways to use tomato powder? I’d love to hear about them!
