Thursday, September 3, 2009

Dried Tomato Skins

I mentioned here that I was trying, for my first time, to dry tomato skins to use as flavouring in soups.  They dried quite quickly and then we whizzed them through the blender.  I did the first cookie sheet full and we all got a chuckle out of how little powder we were left with after grinding them.
Full Vita-mix.
Teeny, tiny bit of resulting tomato powder at bottom of Vita-mix.
No matter.  This is intensely flavoured stuff and I think a little will go a long way. Now we are drying a bunch of different herbs and nettle to grind up and mix with it to make our own broth powder.

We are all big fans of *free* food and so the boys and I are quite tickled that we have used something that we would have composted to make a really tasty seasoning.

3 comments:

sheila said...

Okay, I'm drying my skins. I just did 40 cups of tomatoes - picked them in about 20 minutes - and now I'm deeply curious as to how much powder they'll make.

Very cool idea.

Heather said...

Shelia - Isn't that cool? Mary-Sue told me about it. Did you freeze your 40 cups or make more of your (now famous and prize-winning) salsa?
;-) You do know that we are all going to want your recipe now, don't you? Sometime I'll tell you my story about the "mild" salsa I just made to give as a thank-you with some "mystery" peppers we picked from the garden we are getting free range in. It turned out smokin' hot (although delicious but don't even ask about the chili cheese fries my son made with two of the mystery peppers and didn't even remove the seeds from) I went back a few days later and thought I would check out what kind of pepper it was and the label read Caribbean Habanero - the world's hottest pepper! I don't know if it actually IS the world's hottest pepper but dang! is it hot!!

sheila said...

It is SO cool. I can't believe I never ever thought of doing something with those poor skins, although I only just recently realized that skinning the tomatoes really IS the best way to go, so I feel confident that in another, oh, say, 40 years it might have occurred to me.

I'm making salsa! If my stove man had come earlier I would have sent Shelly home with a jar for you and Samantha, but he didn't, so instead I was left with a half-finished pot of it. I'll give you the recipe. It's pretty plain. It's weirdly similar to your Mild Mystery Salsa story! Don't you love how those teeny tiny peppers turn into the stuff of legend? I'm growing Thai Dragon Chilies right now but this rain is making them all sad. I bet your summers are perfect for making them hot.