Tomato skins... who knew?

Cooking Discussions Cooking, Cookbooks, Ingredients
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I bought a variety of tomatoes Tuesday (last day of sale), mostly due to BOGO deals - so actually I “overbought” because the kids won’t be home until Saturday and they’ll be losing flavor by then.

So I decided to make pasta sauce with the fresh tomatoes using a Serious Eats cooking method that has you bake in the oven for +/- 7 hours. It’s still going but my mid-way assessment is, “Don’t Do This Again” and that I should stick to using canned San Marzano (which is how the SE recipe was set out). The processing method I got from the “fresh mater” recipe was to halve, gut, and shred down to (but not including) skin. Very tedious. That’s the main reason I don’t want to do this again.

In any event I have skins from 6 pounds of tomatoes, most with a fair bit (ca. 300-600 microns) of flesh clinging to them.

So I googled “uses for excess tomato skins” and hit this Serious Eats recommendation at the top of the list.

You dry, grind with sugar and salt, and use any time you want to add a tomato-ey flavor to something. Anyone tried this? (I’m in-process now, drying the skins).


Edit - I wonder if the seeds, if dried and ground, would have added any flavor to this prep. Probably not (mostly fibre I guess). But I had almost a full cup of them once I sieved out the jelly/juice.

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Another good use for the food dehydrator, I imagine.

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Gotta try this with the skins. Makes so much sense. Don’t bother with tomato seeds like this. They’re bitter.

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I wonder if you can use a MW like you can for drying herbs.

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Looking forward to hearing how this turns out.

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If you do I have some hotdog water maybe you can repurpose, too.

J/k not a personal dig…this is an old Chowhound reference that has become a running joke in my house.

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You mean you don’t store your used hotdog water for your next batch of hotdogs?

If not for the whole pot, certainly as a “starter” water, no?

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It’s my house braising liquid, naturally! Passed down by my grandpa.

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I bathe in it.

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It makes a great neti pot potion.

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That’s a whole new level of disgusting. :saluting_face:

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Anyone tried this? (I’m in-process now, drying the skins

:person_raising_hand:t5: Me!

I made some this summer.

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I’ve also used a “recipe” called “tomato salt”.

https://chiceats.com/recipe/no-waste-skins/tomato-salt

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(post deleted by author)

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When I make brats, I first cook them in a lidded pan with some water, 7 minutes per side, then the grilling portion is just to brown them.

I do often keep that “brat water” (which also has a bit of the fats from the brats). It usually amounts to about 3-4 ounces of a fatty water mixture, so I dump it into a “snack” sized ZipLoc bag.

I’ve used it in ham & bean soups and the like.

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You don’t keep yours going for Amish Friendship Hot Dogs?

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I was joking but evidently not too far off :laughing::laughing:

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Turned out pretty well. I baked the skins at about 150°F to dry, then hand-crumbled so I could get them in the spice grinder.

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I figured I had about double the skins vs. the recipe so I used a scant half teaspoon each of salt/sugar (as ~ 1/4 tsp each, in each of 2 grinds).

Got 25 grams of this nice pink powder, about half of which is sugar and salt.

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I did a test with a bit of it stirred into water at about a 1:10 ratio and it tasted pretty good. Essentially it’s a tomato bouillon. I sifted 1/2 teaspoon into my egg omelet this morning and could taste a bit of the tomato flavor - another 1/4 tsp would have been better (4 egg omelet).

Edit - I had missed @shrinkrap’s earlier post on this topic.

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Would you do it again? Was it worth the effort?

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Doing the skins this way was really very little effort, so I would do it again if I happen to have skins that are usable on hand (but the “sauce from fresh maters” thing, I won’t never ever never do again).

The problem for me and “happen to have skins” question, is that I most often have skins because I’m roasting tomatoes with onions and garlic for soup. My standard prep is to drizzle with olive oil and roast with salt and pepper, then skin after roasting which is very easy to do.

I think the olive oil would gunk up the grinding process, and I’m not sure I’m enamored enough of my pink mater bouillon that I’m going to switch to blanch & peel prior to roasting.

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