Saturday, August 8, 2015

dehydrating tomatoes and more

Even though Lonnie's tomato plants look pretty scraggly, they are putting out enough tomatoes that we are getting "tomatoed out". There are more tomatoes that we really want to eat.

I got the dehydrator out and not only dehydrated some tomatoes, I also dehydrated some fresh pineapple that seemed too acid to eat, some over ripe bananas, and also a little bit of cantaloupe...just to see what it would taste like.


Our dehydrator has 4 trays. I filled them all. 


I set it up out on the screen porch since it does put off a little heat and is also sort of noisy.


The tomato slices were ready in about 10 hours.  They all fit into a pint container and went into the freezer.


After 10 hours, I turned the dehydrator off.  The fruits still weren't crunchy-dry...they were a little chewy.
I will be storing them in the fridge so I wasn't worried about all the moisture being out of them.
The cantaloupe was mild and sweet. 


The pineapple was intensely sweet and tangy!

When I have dehydrated bananas before, they did get crunchy. I wonder if these didn't because they were over ripe. They were pleasantly sweet and chewy though.

The Sasquatch suggested that the dried banana slices might be good chopped up and added to chocolate chip cookies.  It sounds like it's worth a try!   Bananas and chocolate are a good combination.



2 comments:

  1. I found dried cantaloupe in a store. It was pretty good. Never thought of drying it before I saw it. Haven't tried to do so yet. Store seems pretty sugary. They also do grapefruit, which I haven't tried yet.

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    1. I didn't use a sugar glaze on anything. The dehydration concentrates the natural sugars so it's sweet enough anyway.

      I haven't heard of doing grapefruit...but watermelon is supposed to be really good dehydrated...might try both of those.

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