Dried tomatoes

[Odsox]

I have just discovered an ingredient that will become indispensable in our kitchen from now onwards, POWDERED TOMATO.
We did a batch earlier in the week and it's fantastic. I cooked a chicken risotto last night and 2 teaspoons of tomato powder gave it a lovely fresh tomato taste and gave the rice a lovely pink colour, rather than the unappetising grey.
I can foresee lots of uses for it, where you want a tomato flavour and puréed tomato would water down the food. Tomato flavoured bread and tomato omelettes to name just 2, as well as a teaspoonful in casseroles and stews.

Dead easy to do if you have a dehydrator, liquidise fresh tomatoes, spread (pour) on cling filmed dehydrator trays and dry for a few hours then whizz the resulting flakes into a powder.

[Green Aura]

Great idea. I've seen similar done with kimchi to give dishes that extra umami thing and a shot of probiotics. The trouble is kimchi never lasts long enough here to dehydrate any!

[ojay54]

Tony,I'm in the market for a dehydrator(the non-human kind,I find Thatchers' Gold works well in that respect).Got any tips? Now we have no Rayburn,it's expensive doing Toms in the gas oven.

Has any one taken this idea of powder one step on? Mushrooms? Stone-fruit? Hmm..

[Odsox]

Sorry, I forgot a step in the prep. Liquidise quartered fresh tomatoes and then put through a mouli to remove seeds and bits of skin.

OJ, we dry mushrooms, but only to the leathery stage. Next time we see mushrooms cheap I'll give it a go, although I'm not sure how easy it would be to turn into powder. They might need a mill rather than a food processor, which we haven't got (although looking for one but they are an arm and two legs to buy)
Powdered mushrooms would be great for omelettes and stews too.

Powdered onions sounds good too.

For liquidised things like tomatoes you need a machine that passes warm air over the trays rather than through. We had a cheap(ish) circular one that blew the air through, but this year bought a very expensive one that blows it over the trays.
Hence the playing with novel things

[Green Aura]

We've got an Excalibur 9-tray. Cost a fortune new but they do crop up on Fleabay fairly regularly, which is where we got ours. Splendid piece of kit, although it takes up quite a lot of room.

[Zech]

I've dried mushrooms all the way to a crisp (in the oven). Some parts - the tubes of boletes (is that what they're called? Gills seemed wrong) - powder quite readily when you handle them, but other parts don't. I think I read someone's description of using dried, powdered mushrooms as a base for stock powder.

[Odsox]

Ours is a 9 tray Excalibur as well GA. It was necessary to "up-grade" as I could see lots of fruit needing to be dried this year.
As it happened we dried just over 10 kilos of apricots, and we have all of those grapes to turn into sultanas (I mean, what else could I do with all those grapes ?), plus a huge crop of apples this year that some need turning into apple rings.

[diggernotdreamer]

I did the powder thing with tomatoes last year, it was tricky the way I did it, by trying to powder dried tomatoes, will give the other method a go, it was really useful to have. I dehydrated a lot of onions last year as they weren't going to store, and they were so useful, you can just bung them into things as they are, they quickly re-hydrate, so powdered up those with the tomatoes and some dried garlic. You do need some kind of coffee mill I think to powder things up that are whole which I don't have. Watch out for powdered raspberrry, it is going to be the next 'thing'

[Odsox]

What a good idea, I hadn't thought of juicy soft fruit.
We have a load of autumn fruiting raspberries coming and with what we have already picked, plus the summer fruiting ones, the freezer is getting chocker. We have bottled them in the past, but drying the de-seeded purée juice would be perfect and very easy to drop a spoonful or two into stewed apple or sprinkled over winter breakfast porridge.
I'll defrost some and try it tomorrow.

[ojay54]

Tony,how about running your fruit (De stoned) though a passatta machine ? Bloody Simples ! In fact use foraged blackberries,and you've got a serious supply of virtually free vitamin C.

[ojay54]

Don't want to hijack....but....if I pick one up in the States will I need some sort of inverter to run it on 240?

[Odsox]

I didn't know such things as a passata maker existed OJ. I just looked them up and you're right, they look ideal for this job. Will have to look around and see if I can locate one here. Amazon have several listed, but they are all from other companies who won't export to "foreign" countries, although Amazon themselves will.

If you pick up a 120v machine in the states you will need a transformer, the opposite of an inverter. They are easily obtainable but will add at least another £50 to the cost. It's worth checking though as a lot of American stuff is dual voltage now (120/240)

[Green Aura]

And again, I got mine on Fleabay.

[Odsox]

And again, I got mine on Fleabay.

None on there at the moment.
Will have to continue with the 2 step method, liquidise and mouli.

[ojay54]

You CAN buy them in the UK,cos a friend of mine who's never been further than Worcester got one last year,I'll investigate and get back to you,but it may be ''on the other side'' before I get anywhere.

Edit: Found it on Amazon!! 'Roma Food Strainer and Sauce Maker'.60 Sovs,honestly ,worth it. I bought mine in Borgo val di Taro a couple of years back,and it was all of that then.