Love my dried tomatoes
I just completed my seventh batch of dried tomatoes. Each batch of tomatoes fills all nine trays in my Excalibur Dehydrator. I get about 20-22 lbs into each batch. That’s the equivalent of about seven quarts of canned diced tomatoes. It takes about 24 hrs for a load of tomatoes to dry, give or take 2-3 hours depending on the humidity. The best part? A dryer-load of tomatoes fits into one 1/2 gallon jar. Imagine that—seven quarts of tomatoes condensed into two. How cool is that?
So easy to do
Drying tomatoes couldn’t be easier: you just wash all the tomatoes, cut out the core and any blemishes, slice about 1/4″ thick and arrange on trays. Tomatoes can touch but not overlap.
Since tomatoes have so much water in them, they take a while to dry. About 18 hours into the drying, I’ll check the tomatoes to how they’re doing. When they are leathery dry, I will take them out and turn over all the slices, then pop them back in for another 4-8 hours, or until they are crispy dry.
So convenient
The very best way to use dried tomatoes is to pop them into the blender and blend until they are turned into a powder. Then add water to reconstitute: a little water to create tomato paste or more water to make tomato sauce.
This is so much easier than boiling tomatoes for hours to get a thick sauce or paste. and then canning the sauce. And it means you can use just a very little without having three-quarters of the jar go to waste.
You can also just crumble up a few dried tomatoes and add them to soups or casseroles for a more bulky tomato-y addition to the dish.
You’ve got questions…
And I have answers.
To peel or not to peel? Yes, I dry the tomatoes with the skins. Once they are ground into a powder, you’ll never know they weren’t peeled. Yes, I dry them with the seeds. The seeds also get ground into the powder and you really can’t taste any difference.
Do you really have to turn them over? Probably not. But humidity is such a problem here, especially in the fall and I don’t want any moisture at all, if I can help it. By turning them over, I’m ensuring that there are no spots that aren’t perfectly dry.
How do you store them? Often the humidity here will soften my dried foods. So to ensure they stay dry, I store them in vacuum-sealed containers like these canisters
(When these battery-powered portable jar sealers first came out, I bought one, thinking it’d be perfect for all the jar sealing I do. But about 80% of the time it wouldn’t seal. Totally unacceptable. But about ten months later, after lots of research, I ordered this one, It had the lowest number of negative reviews and it works beautifully.)
Why not just store the powder? Humidity. No matter much how dried them, it seems like even the tiniest whiff of humidity was enough to turn the powder into a brick. If you live in the very arid western US, go ahead and powderize them. It’s super convenient and takes even less space than the dried slices.
What about preserving them in olive oil? Yes, for a truly divinely tasting treat, store some of your dried tomatoes in olive oil. If you’re going to store them in olive oil, they only need to be leathery-dry, not crispy dry. You you’ll probably want to remove the seeds as well. Some recipes will tell you to remove the skin as well, but I think that’s a matter of personal taste.
I found this page to have the most thorough and helpful instructions for dried tomatoes in olive oil. Be sure to watch the tutorial video
Isn’t sun dried better? Don’t be too enchanted by “sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil”. Dried is dried, whether in the sun or in the dehydrator. Tomatoes take a long time to dry, which means that they partially re-hydrate in the cool night air, so it takes several days to dry, days where you are losing flavor, color and nutrition and possibly attracting insects.
What about roasting them? Ah, now. roasted tomatoes is another thing entirely. Roasting caramelizes some of the sugars and gives you a deeper, more complex flavor with smoky overtones. If you’d like a roasted flavor to
your tomatoes, by all means, roast them. Depending on the size, cut into halves or quarters and roast them in the oven till they get a little singed and blackened around the edges. Then dry them in the dehydrator. So yummy!
The versatile tomato
There are lots of different ways to preserve your garden goodness: drying, freezing, canning, pickling, etc. I often encourage you to use a variety of food preservation techniques—for the interesting flavors each method produces but also as sort of “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” principle. If all your food is in the freezer and it fails, you’ve lost everything.
Tomatoes are one food that tastes wonderful no matter which preservation method you use. I hope you’ll try drying tomatoes to get a nice variety of food and save yourself a lot of time, energy and space.
Here’s wishing you a year full of tasty tomatoes.
Thanks so Much for posting this!!! I am really interested making dried tomatoes in oil. Thanks for posting the tutorial! What is the equivalent of 1 can of store bought canned diced tomatoes to dried tomatoes? Half of a pint jar or less? I’m just guessing.
I ask, because, I have a meal-in-jar recipe that calls for 1 can of diced tomatoes. But if I can use dried and add that to the jar then the meal-in-jar really will be a complete MIJ. I’m not looking for exact just a guess. You have more experience and your guess is close enough for me.
Thanks again for posting!!
Here’s my math (thinking out loud): we’ll use 1 qt canned tomatoes = 1 can store tomatoes (a can is a bit smaller, but close enough, right?) In that 1/2 gallon jar is the equivalent of 7 qts, so if we say 1/8 of the jar = 1 can, that’d be roughly 2 C of the dried tomatoes. Is that right? Yes, of course! Because because most veggies double in volume, so 2 C dried = 4 C fresh veggies.
Hey! That’ll work. I’d love to see your MIJ ideas and recipes. I think adding dried veggies to MIJ is brilliant.
Thanks for the reply. 2 cups sounds about right. I make chili mac in a jar which calls for 1 can of diced tomatoes. But the whole idea behind MIJ is to have everything in the jar. Plus I have all of these beautiful tomatoes. In the Jar, everything is bagged separate so you can ‘mix-n-match’ and to avoid cross contamination. So if one thing goes bad the whole meal isn’t lost. Or if you would rather use canned toms for whatever reason you can. Same thing for the powdered milk; if you want to use regular milk you can. Maybe the fridg milk is going out of date and you would rather use it up. I label each bag with name and amount so you know how much to substitute. The recipes are from Chicken in the Road and Budget101. Thanks again for the reply! I love your posts!