Quote:
Originally Posted by Starlight
. ...Also for the ones I remove the seeds from is their something I can do with all the meat and skins left over instead of tossing to the compost pile?
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I dehydrated a whole bunch of tomatoes a few years ago -- so many that I haven't done it since. My dehydrator is the on/off kind, with no fan or temperature controls, and with 6 or 7 trays. I discovered that the most efficient way to dehydrate larger tomatoes was to scoop out the seeds and gel, and dehydrate the rest, otherwise some of them would start to get moldy before they dried! I couldn't rotate the trays enough. The alternative was to do only a couple trays at a time. I cut the tomatoes in such a way that only the tomato peel sat on the dehydrator tray; otherwise, the wet tomato would stick to the dehydrator tray. Once they'd dried a little, I could turn them over.
For cherry tomatoes, iirc most of them did not need to be scooped out, but it would depend on how juicy they were and if they could dehydrate fast enough (before they got moldy).
I read about a technique for slicing a dozen or more cherry tomatoes at a time. You put them on a plate, put another plate on top (making a plate "sandwich"), and run a sharp bread knife between the plates as you apply some pressure on the top plate to keep the tomatoes in place. iirc I tried it once and it was a little messy, but I could see that if you had dozens and dozens, you could get good at it and it would save time. I cut fresh cranberries in half when I dry them, and this method was not effective for cranberries -- they're too small and hard.
You could also make tomato "leather" if the remainders are all mushed together. I use parchment paper on my dehydrator trays when I'm drying goopy things such as persimmons.
When I canned tomatoes a few years ago, the friend I canned with told me that she had dried the skins and seeds that came out of the tomato mill, and dried those to make a tomato powder! I have also frozen random bits of peel and seed, and it's a welcome addition to soups and stews in the winter. So there is no need to waste any bit of tomato that is not a saved seed.