How do you use tomato powder?
As you would tomatoes, or in other ways?
Yes, I add it to sauces, soups, chili and the like. It takes up a little less space in powder form but still has all the tomato taste.
Fresh herbs. Bananas. Apples. Peaches. Fish.
This morning apples with a dusting of cinnamon. 200 degree oven for an hour, flip over apples and
dry another hour. Turn off oven leave in box another hour. Dust w cinnamon. Air dry before canistering.
Yesterday, decided to dehydrate 5 pineapples since I found them at .99 at HT.
Dried them for 17 hours.
Most difficult was chopping off their heads.
They were delicious. Today I think I will try dehydrating sweet potato chips for my 2 Pomeranians . They are not particularly fond of fruits, son gives them blueberries but they turn their nose u in the air. Wolfie may eat a piece of fuyu as my son only eats the center part to my dismay. Any treats I get for them that has apples, or berries, they are not interested unless it is duck fillet! So, wil try sweet potato chips.
The trim on the bottom of your cabinets ( I think) is beautiful! What is that?
Last time I bought pineapples on sale I made pineapple vinegar. Anyone e else tried that?
no, have never tried pineapple vinegar but love spicy coconut vinegar
Just found out I may be allergic to pineapple ( have auto immune disease. My immune system keeps on thinking the and that is allergen and attacks releasing histamine)
while getting it ready, my fingers were red and itchy
they are delicious, but sort of tasted spicy after taste and then has sore on my tongue
My son did not have any of that feeling. I had same problem with. handling tomatoes as well as their leaves, I get blisters.
The cabinets are Poggenpohl German Cabinets installed in 1990. They are great.I had specified I want something that is shiny, kitchen people gave me a choice go German Poggenpohl and Italian but I opt for German as they are sturdier, no nonsense and at time, unheard of course they engineered it so I can have hydraulic lifts on my Kitchen Aid and kick plates were cabinets as well.
Come 2008, I decided I want a facelift. Poggnpohls were still great, softer researching, I found mother of pearl veneers and abalone veneers from Hawaii that came from Australia. T&he company did Ringo Starr’s drums. I commissioned my carpenter to do mother of pearl for the cabinets, abalone for the existing handles, trims and kick plate. Even the bar sink was redone in abalone. ! It was a lot of work since I have a huge kitchen but worth it as they are very easy to clean. THis is just one of 6 sections of poggenpohl in kitchen. Wet%20Bar%20in%20Paua|700x525
Very good advice!
@bcc My starter died some 2 months ago, due to negligence. Finally I’ve to admit, I baked less sourdough bread than I believe.
When the pandemic hit, and there was no yeast to be found, dried sourdough starter was very popular with my friends.
I’m one of those people who frequently dehydrates. I had to laugh at the comment upthread about the scotch-bonnets. When we do ghost peppers (goggles and gloves required), we won’t even do it in the house. Way too potent.
Yes to scallions, also. I can’t seem to ever make enough of those. Onions, in general, when drying are another thing that stink up the house.
Beef and fish jerky = yes.
Fruits and berries = yes.
Right now we are out of almost everything we dried last year, a good indication that it gets used. There are a few handfuls left of strawberries and Asian pears for snacking, which won’t last long, and one lonely jar of kale flakes. I’ve already started drying this years chives, but I don’t use a dehydrator for that - just spread them out on a sheet pan for a few days.
In short, if it’s going to go bad, and I can’t freeze it or reasonably can it, I’ll dry it.
Oh so exquisite! I’ve never seen something like that! Then again, we’ll probably never remodel our 1980’s ‘perm mentality’ crappy wood trimmed paneled kitchen.
Persimmons were my favorite.
I have dehydrated food stuffs for decades. I purchased the first dehydrater in 1992 for putting up an abundance of home grown tomatoes, that I wasn’t canning. Too hot to can, so I dehydrated on the back porch, out of the house. I also ground many slices to make ‘instant’ spaghetti seasoning. I moved on to produce on sale: pineapple slices dipped in teriyaki sauce, many purchased mushrooms and hand picked morels (grinding up many others dried for mushroom powder), all sorts of apples, pears, bananas, lemon, orange and lime slices, mango slices (the ataulfo type), papaya slices, yams (baked in the oven first to release the sugars) carrots, zuke slices and shredded zuke, green onions, red, yellow and white onions, all types of bell peppers, apricot puree for fruit leathers, fennel, kale, chives, leeks, broccoli ( not so great) rhubarb, cherries (pitted), strawberries, beef strips with teriyaki to make backpacking jerkey, just to name a few. The old dehydrator still going strong after almost 30 years with the addition of a few more trays. I’ve also dehydrated other herbs and flowers, also.
Ginger. Freshly dried ginger has a real citrus aroma and a lot more flavour than anything you can buy. After the ginger is crispy dry, it gets ground in a conical burr grinder to a powder. Worth the work.
During November a few years ago, my grocery shopping included a quart of grape tomatoes in a square, plastic, perforated clamshell which was shallow enough that the tomatoes were only two or three deep. Heeding the advice to avoid refrigerating fresh tomatoes, I left the clamshell on the counter. The tomatoes were a strong red color, but firm, with little sweetness. The following day, what should have been routine day surgery nosedived into hemopneumothorax and a full code. I was resuscitated and spent the ensuing three months in a hospital bed. When I got back home, I noticed that the tomatoes had shrunk by nearly half their size. The skins were wrinkly but there was no mold or discoloration. They were delicious, with intense flavor, used in tossed salads over the following week.
Ever since, I have air-dried clamshells of grape tomatoes in this way. I’ll buy two or more at a time, and use some from alternating clamshells whenever I make a salad. I haven’t tried this with cherry or Roma tomatoes.
Some of the best things happen by accident!
Muchos mushrooms.
Interesting (but sorry to hear about your “routine → nightmare”).
Any time I’ve left grape tomatoes out and forgot them, they’ve molded. Are you in a pretty dry climate?
As for the long-ago original question, I used to dry various fruits (apple, pineapple, banana, cherry, strawberry, tomato) because I didn’t like how much sugar was in commercial preps. And grease in the case of banana chips.
But not much in the way of veggies, unless a potato is a veggie. And not very often for the potatoes.
Otherwise it was lots of jerky, until I burned out the heating element in the hair dryer thingie that was at the heart of it.
I still make jerky and biltong (which I guess is a jerky of sorts) but I adapted a Rubbermaid tub with vent holes along the bottom, computer fan at the top to draw air, and a mild heating element (100W bulb). It doesn’t get as warm as the original dehydrator, but it gets the job done.
The following day, what should have been routine day surgery nosedived into hemopneumothorax and a full code. I was resuscitated and spent the ensuing three months in a hospital bed. When I got back home, I noticed that the tomatoes had shrunk by nearly half their size
That’s an amazing story! Glad you are around to tell it.
I will also ad that fruit rarely mold in my kitchen, but I don’t leave it long.
I live in a Boston suburb, not dry at all. My unintended experiment ran from early to late winter. The electric heat was set on 60° the whole time. Most recently, I bought a quart of grape tomatoes three months ago, and just this week put the remainder, about a cup, into a jar of bean salad to partially rehydrate them. There was no mold ever. The clamshell was never in direct sunlight.