What's your favorite food dehydrator for tomatoes?

Barb_FL
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Re: What's your favorite food dehydrator for tomatoes?

#21

Post: # 22181Unread post Barb_FL
Wed Jun 10, 2020 8:45 pm

habitat-gardener wrote: Wed Jun 10, 2020 6:50 pm
Barb_FL wrote: Fri Jun 05, 2020 6:09 pm I have the Excalibur also (3 seasons now) as recommended by Marsha. For cherry tomatoes I use to cut them in half, but I now just puree them in a blender and pour like a pancake on the sheets, and into the dehydrator. It saves so much time not having to cut.

When they are done, I let them cool off on the sheets (minutes) and then break them into chips and into a freezer bag into the freezer. I think they taste way better too.
That sounds really wonderful. Do they need to go into the freezer? I've dehydrated fruits and vegetables to leave more freezer space for things that needed to be frozen. (My partner thinks the best use of freezer space is ice cream, especially homemade cashew-based!)

Several years ago I had a productive garden and a new-to-me round-tray dehydrator, so I dried everything. It was a basic on-off, no fan, multiple trays. It ran nonstop for about 4 months! (iirc I got it at a rummage sale for $5!)

And then last year a friend gave me a 6-tray Excalibur she wasn't using. So far I've dried tomatoes and lemons. It has the sheets, so I plan to experiment with fruit leathers as well.

The main difference is that the fan makes the Excalibur quite noisy in a small house. I was able to run the other one night and day because it was so quiet. The Excalibur, on the other hand, is impossible to ignore. I've turned it off temporarily if I wanted to talk in the kitchen while cooking!
No, you don't need to freeze them.

I've done the dehydrating inside the house and on the porch and the porch wins. I did it once this year in another room, shut the door, and when I went in the room to check, it was so hot and that was with the a/c running. I haven't done it since inside the house.

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worth1
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Re: What's your favorite food dehydrator for tomatoes?

#22

Post: # 22195Unread post worth1
Thu Jun 11, 2020 5:32 am

Loud fans heats up the house brown toasted peppers.
What else could someone ask for.
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Re: What's your favorite food dehydrator for tomatoes?

#23

Post: # 22262Unread post bower
Thu Jun 11, 2020 6:32 pm

There are times and places, when a warm dehydrator can be a happy thing in the house. ;)

I must admit I have a round cheapo dehydrator which someone gave to me, and the hours to dry tomatoes were just too much. It's okay to dry garlic or mushrooms but I decided it wasn't worthwhile to dry tomatoes.
Loving the reviews of excalibur! :)
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Shule
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Re: What's your favorite food dehydrator for tomatoes?

#24

Post: # 22265Unread post Shule
Thu Jun 11, 2020 7:13 pm

Thanks for the dehydrator ideas, so far, everyone.

I found one that looks pretty awesome and worth mentioning, although I don't plan to get it. It's pretty expensive, could use more reviews (on Amazon) and only has six trays (albeit extra large ones) but I like the look of this one: https://brodandtaylor.com/pages/sahara- ... dehydrator

You might think I'm mentioning it because it's compactable, but I'm just as interested in the dual-heat action, the dual temperature control, the dual 99 hour timers, stainless steel racks (extra cost), the tray size, and such.
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Re: What's your favorite food dehydrator for tomatoes?

#25

Post: # 22293Unread post Shule
Fri Jun 12, 2020 2:48 am

worth1 wrote: Thu Jun 11, 2020 5:32 am Loud fans heats up the house brown toasted peppers.
What else could someone ask for.
Not all dehydrators toast things, and not all make loud sounds. I never noticed a problem with ours heating up the house (but I do like heat more than most, and we probably had an air conditioner on, which was louder than the dehydrators). However, those issues can all potentially occur with some devices and some settings, but it's not an all-encompassing guarantee. And yeah, they could be pretty nice in the fall/winter/spring, if you have stuff to dehydrate then—not that I've tried it.

I'm sure sundried tomatoes are pretty awesome, though.

I've never tried drying tomatoes in the sun, yet. What process do you use?

My main concern is that my neighbor's cats would lick them, or that the wasps, ants, and flies would feast on them, or that the flies would lay eggs in them.

I'm tempted to sundry tomatoes with a box fan blowing on them to speed it up. Maybe all the animals would be deterred by a strong fan.
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Re: What's your favorite food dehydrator for tomatoes?

#26

Post: # 22304Unread post worth1
Fri Jun 12, 2020 8:23 am

Shule wrote: Fri Jun 12, 2020 2:48 am
worth1 wrote: Thu Jun 11, 2020 5:32 am Loud fans heats up the house brown toasted peppers.
What else could someone ask for.
Not all dehydrators toast things, and not all make loud sounds. I never noticed a problem with ours heating up the house (but I do like heat more than most, and we probably had an air conditioner on, which was louder than the dehydrators). However, those issues can all potentially occur with some devices and some settings, but it's not an all-encompassing guarantee. And yeah, they could be pretty nice in the fall/winter/spring, if you have stuff to dehydrate then—not that I've tried it.

I'm sure sundried tomatoes are pretty awesome, though.

I've never tried drying tomatoes in the sun, yet. What process do you use?

My main concern is that my neighbor's cats would lick them, or that the wasps, ants, and flies would feast on them, or that the flies would lay eggs in them.

I'm tempted to sundry tomatoes with a box fan blowing on them to speed it up. Maybe all the animals would be deterred by a strong fan.
I have never dried a tomato but have dried peppers apples and peaches.
All of them naturally on the porch out of the sun (peppers) and the apples and peaches were dried under a screen on a big table out in the sun.
Whether you are drying in a dehydrator or naturally, air flow humidity plays the biggest roll.
If you are trying to dry in 90% humidity it just isn't going to happen naturally.
Using a dehydrator and using heat is basically cooking the product to get rid of the moisture.
Another observation is sun or no sun.
I dont care for using the sun as long as the humidity is low.
My house or the shade outside alone is a perfect dehydrator for my experiment peppers.
Not using heat and or the sun preserves the color.
I always seem to have a few dried habanero peppers that dried up I never got around to using.
I have also read that a humidity around 50 to 60% or lower is perfect for drying.
This is about the same as drying sausage but you dont want the humidity too low for meat because it will get what you call case hardening which traps moisture inside the sausage or meat.
To wrap this up.
If you have a dehydrator and heat control and very low humidity you might try the just the fan to move the moisture out of the chamber.
Air conditioning is a very good dehumidifier on its own.

I have had stuff naturally dried and all manner of other ways of drying and in my opinion the naturally dried product was far better if you can pull it off.
The flavor is still there.
I hope I didn't get too far off topic.
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Re: What's your favorite food dehydrator for tomatoes?

#27

Post: # 22322Unread post Shule
Fri Jun 12, 2020 4:00 pm

[mention]worth1[/mention] worth
I think my favorite white mulberries say they were dried in the shade, and UV is said to destroy vitamins. So, that makes a lot of sense.

How long does it take to dry stuff outside, anyway? Is it more than a day? We've got low humidity here (usually between 8% and 42% or so during the late spring and during the summer); so, that shouldn't be a problem.

I've got some leftover tomato sauce from some burritos I ate. I think I'll experimentally try drying it into leather outside now. Humidity is 21% and it's 90° F. (climbing to 93° F.) The tomatoes were canned, though.
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Re: What's your favorite food dehydrator for tomatoes?

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Post: # 22325Unread post Shule
Fri Jun 12, 2020 4:14 pm

Okay, I've got it in the shade on some parchment paper. I don't have it protected from cats, but I just need to see how well it dries, anyway. The wind is only 2.7MPH, right now.
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Re: What's your favorite food dehydrator for tomatoes?

#29

Post: # 22328Unread post worth1
Fri Jun 12, 2020 4:31 pm

Shule wrote: Fri Jun 12, 2020 4:00 pm @worth1 worth
I think my favorite white mulberries say they were dried in the shade, and UV is said to destroy vitamins. So, that makes a lot of sense.

How long does it take to dry stuff outside, anyway? Is it more than a day? We've got low humidity here (usually between 8% and 42% or so during the late spring and during the summer); so, that shouldn't be a problem.

I've got some leftover tomato sauce from some burritos I ate. I think I'll experimentally try drying it into leather outside now. Humidity is 21% and it's 90° F. (climbing to 93° F.) The tomatoes were canned, though.
It takes several days to dry outside.
You will have to spread the sauce out thinner.
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Re: What's your favorite food dehydrator for tomatoes?

#30

Post: # 22340Unread post Shule
Fri Jun 12, 2020 6:06 pm

[mention]worth1[/mention]
It already looks about 20% drier. I think I'll just let it go to see what happens, this time. I won't blame you if it doesn't turn out, though!
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Re: What's your favorite food dehydrator for tomatoes?

#31

Post: # 22343Unread post worth1
Fri Jun 12, 2020 6:20 pm

[mention]Shule[/mention]
My friends family makes the tomato concentrate in Sicily on a big sheet of plywood.
Turns it into the very thick paste.
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Re: What's your favorite food dehydrator for tomatoes?

#32

Post: # 22361Unread post MissS
Fri Jun 12, 2020 9:02 pm

In Sicily they make tomato paste like this:

~ Patti ~

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Re: What's your favorite food dehydrator for tomatoes?

#33

Post: # 22366Unread post karstopography
Sat Jun 13, 2020 4:00 am

98% of Americans are way, way, way too uptight about food handling to do it that way, but I love the method. Looks like flavor deluxe. Thanks for the share.
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Re: What's your favorite food dehydrator for tomatoes?

#34

Post: # 22367Unread post karstopography
Sat Jun 13, 2020 4:17 am

Anywhere east of the 100th parallel in the USA is going to present problems for drying food outside for extended periods. Dew points tend to be too high in the summer (you can thank the Gulf of Mexico and the Bermuda High for most of the area’s humidity). The neighbor was from South Africa and would make Biltong, basically strips of seasoned raw meat dried on vegetation, but it’s tricky to do in a more humid area.

But I could see that Siciliano way of making tomato paste working in New Mexico, Idaho, Parts of California, places like that out west, so long as the summer Monsoon was not coming into play. Not that any of the food safety authorities that mostly are a plague to food culture would allow it on any kind of commercial scale production.
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Re: What's your favorite food dehydrator for tomatoes?

#35

Post: # 22370Unread post worth1
Sat Jun 13, 2020 7:29 am

I could do this in a heart beat where I live at the right time of the year.
Another fantastic place in Texas to do this is out in West Texas in places like Fort Davis, Alpine, Marfa even.
If you look at a map of Texas just about anything north and west if the escarpment is a good place.
This is also more or less the dividing line between desert and not desert.
When I lived in Angleton you couldn't dry anything to save your life.
Rule of thumb if you can cool your house with an evaporative cooler you can dry food outside.
Right now in Palermo where my friends family lives the humidity is 48%.

If you have a good air conditioner the humidity in your house can be way lower than outside.
You can build a plywood box with a fan, racks intake and exhaust and dry in it without any added heat.
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Re: What's your favorite food dehydrator for tomatoes?

#36

Post: # 30304Unread post Dawn
Thu Sep 10, 2020 2:15 pm

You guys are bad influences :mrgreen:
20200908_155853.jpg
I've already dried some tomatoes and fruit leather. It'll get a lot of use, I think
20200908_170613.jpg
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Re: What's your favorite food dehydrator for tomatoes?

#37

Post: # 30307Unread post Labradors
Thu Sep 10, 2020 2:39 pm

Too funny Dawn! How long did it take you to dry those?

I'm an idiot who thought that a rainy day would be perfect for drying cherry tomatoes. Absolutely stupid because the humidity goes up when it rains, and it takes longer!
The next time, I tried it on a cool night and steamed up the sunroom so that the windows were streaming. It took 12 hours....... Mind you, I did cram the halves in so that they were touching!

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Re: What's your favorite food dehydrator for tomatoes?

#38

Post: # 30319Unread post Dawn
Thu Sep 10, 2020 6:08 pm

It took a while, about a day and a half probably. The little ones were done pretty quick, but some were about 2oz tomatoes (most were Juliet and Blush). They're dry now and in a jar. Now there are slices and some pureed tomatoes that will be leather at some point. Also some Italian plums from my dad's tree. Oh, and a lemon, cause, why not.
Dawn
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Re: What's your favorite food dehydrator for tomatoes?

#39

Post: # 30345Unread post Labradors
Fri Sep 11, 2020 6:50 am

Dawn, that's good to know that it took you a while too :). I'm going to set it up to dehydrate overnight again, but I will leave a window open in future. I was dehydrating some Lucky Agi which are similar in size to Blush, so quite big. The regular cherry tomatoes didn't take so long.

A dehydrated lemon sounds like fun :).

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Re: What's your favorite food dehydrator for tomatoes?

#40

Post: # 30404Unread post Dawn
Fri Sep 11, 2020 8:42 pm

Is Lucky Agi the one that was first named Bellota? I grew it last year and it was one of the best tasting tomatoes I've grown, but the skin was so very thick. Dehydrating would be the way to go with those. I have a round dehydrator with no temp control, and it ran hot. Perfect for jerky, but if I left tomatoes long enough to get crispy, they'd taste a little burnt. This one doesn't do that. The dried tomatoes taste good, I find myself eating them like any dried fruit.
Dawn
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