Dehydrated tomatoes

Sun-dried tomatoes is something I have used often, but now that I have a dehydrator, what happens if I dry my own tomatoes? I sliced up a tomato into about 5 mm thick slices and put them on the dehydrator tray. By the way, that odd looking knife is my ceramic knife, very sharp, perfect for tomatoes and the like.

The tomatoes went in on 57 degrees Celsius for 10 hours. When I got them out, they were, well, dry. They had of course lost quite a bit of size, but even though the smaller bits had sort of curled up and become curly blobs, the larger slices still had a nice "slicy" shape to them.

They were not entirely dry and brittle like potato chips, but rather had the feel of very thin leather. and was a bit chewy. I do not know if they will go brittle if left long enough, but that should be possible to find out. I have read in Modernist Cuisine that if you infuse them with starch first, by letting them soak in a slurry with potato starch for instance, and then place them in a chamber vacuum machine which will make sure that the starch is forced into the cells of the tomatoes before drying, you can fry them in oil after drying to get crisp tomato chips. I do not have a chamber machine, but I may experiment by putting them in a spuma bottle and charge that with gas to get the starch soaked slices under pressure. That might work.

The slices tasted very nice indeed. Sun-dried tomatoes often have a taste that is a bit different from fresh tomatoes, more of a cooked flavour. These tasted of fresh tomatoes, but very concentrated fresh tomatoes. They also kept a more vibrant red colour that you normally find in sun-dried tomatoes which tend to go brown.

So what can I use these for? I am thinking pizza topping. Perhaps I should make pizza this weekend?

New gadget - the dehydrator!

I guess I will be proving someones idea of men in the kitchen when I say that I do like new kitchen gadgets. I have already received harsh remarks for having a sous vide machine when the same effect can be achieved with the oven set to a low temperature, which by the way is NOT true. Note to self: document that in a future post.

Anyway, It turned out that I had birthday this year as well, and my wife, knowing me quite well by now, got me a dehydrator. A dehydrator is a box with a number of trays in it, a controllable heat source and a fan to move the air around. Again, like an oven, then. So, could I just use an oven? Well, first of all it may not be possible to set the oven to a low enough temperature, especially for fruit and vegetables that require rather low temps in order to not be cooked in stead of dried. Also, you will need an oven with good ventilation and a fan. The oven will also be less effective in terms of cost since it uses much more power than the dehydrator, and the process will take many hours. But for some items I guess you could use it, though.

My first dehydration project was bananas. I just chopped up a banana and placed the slices on the trays, set the temperature to 57 degrees Celsius. After about 8 hours I had a nice bunch of banana chips. They were not as crunchy as the ones you can buy, though. I will have to experiment more with that!

My next project will be tomatoes. I love dried tomatoes. How good can I make them at home?