You can also use your oven, set at 140 degrees, prop the door open a bit and place a fan for circulation.

I think the american harvestor brand you can order additional trays for expansion.

You didn't mention if your dehydrator has a thermostat,or what type mater you are dehydrating. The amount of time to dry depends on the water content of the mater.
I only grow roma type maters, as I mainly process, either by canning or dehydrating and they have less water content.

I have an excalibur dehydrator and the maters dry in about 5 hours. I also put a knived X on the back of the skin for faster dehydration.

To be honest I never figured out load of dehydrator to powder for tomatoes, but dehydrated to powder is alot of maters.

I dehydrated bell peppers the other week, the neighbor thought I was nuts getting a bushel of bell peppers. But, I knew they would reduce down to the 1/2 gallon when all said and done. Actually she made me show her the jar, she could not believe they reduced that much.

I am new to the whole idea of putting up my own food and have done small amounts of canning and dehydrating. I have the excalibur dehydrator and love it. I have a question for you and I hope I dont sound ignorant or offensive. What the heck do you do with all that tomato and pepper powder? I love that it takes up so little space but I am jus tat a loss as to what to DO with it. Thanks!

TJ

You are in zone 5,6 and 7? That's a big farm.

If you get sunshine and not too much humidity, you can build a solar drier and make it as big as you want.

Maybe you are already doing it, but to get more stuff dried, I start moving the drier stuff closer together and incorporating it onto fewer trays as it shrinks. I can have a couple of trays of fresh already half done before the original batch is ready to take out of the drier.

1/2 a gallon of dried bell peppers is really not that much for me. I add them to soups and stews, reconstitute for fried onions and peppers. I make Cheese balls for holiday gatherings and will grind them to powder to cover the cheese balls.

This year I have enough maters to make tomato powder besides the usual canned tomato products and sun dried maters.
Tomato powder can be used to make tomato sauce or tomato paste, to thicken soups, chili or stews add to baked goods for a tomato flavor, make salad dressing add to tossed salads. Tomato powder is quite versatile.

I am trying to dehydrate as many tomatoes as I can from my garden. I have three tomato beds that produce close to 300 tomatoes each not counting the green ones I bring in at the end of Sept. to ripen inside. I have never been able to find a commercial dehydrator that will handle such a load. I have tried a homemade dehydrator that has an ele. heater and two ele. fans but I find after 24 hours tomatoes that are done, not done, scortched and awhole tray last week that was not done and scortch beyond saving. The trays are 1.5' x 4' and I have 12 trays. this dehydrator is 4'x4'x'4. I would think it would be more than I need but it has issues i guess. or I do.
I use the powder for paste, sauce, dressing, salsa, ketchup, soups. sprinkle some powder over mashed potatoes and it's great. I feed myself and my family all year from my small garden. I live in an area on a river that sits in a valley and te valley it's self is in a bowl so we're very much so sheltered for the weather. the summers are hot but short so I get lots of produce all at once.

How do you make the tomato powder? I've dehydrated cherry tomatoes and eat them as "sun dried". Do you just dry them out till they're fully brittle and then use a mortar and pestle??

I dehydrate the tomatoes until they are fully brittle and then toss them into and blender. I like to dehydrate the then powder for another 12 hrs. to make sure they're dry. a few years back before I did that I would grab a qrt. jar of powder and it was all stuck togeather and would have to get it out with a knife.

I would really like to make leather from the tomatoes because if I wash, blender and boil, they seem to hold the beautiful tomato red more so than if I just slice and dehydrate. But the leather takes nearly 2-3 days to dry.

Aye, aye Captain! I'll have to try that for next year. Sounds like tomato powder is very versatile stuff. I'm particularly interested in using it to make ketchup! A recipe would be appreciated . . . no hurry.

Captain, you may want to look into the Excalibar Dehydrators.
I have road tested the round type dehydrators and gave them away.
I can make fruit leathers in 4-5 hours in the Excalibur.
Plus the unit is versatile for crafting, cake decorations and yogurt making.
They also make a large commercial unit, along with a large price tag (about 12,000.00) that holds 40 some racks.
But, for that price yeiks.

I got an Excalibur this year and attempted to make tomato powder. I sliced up a half dozen Roma tomatoes and put them to dehydrate. 24 hours later, they were still leathery. Another 24 hours later, they were still leathery. So I then jacked the heat way up, 6 hours later, still leathery. I then abandoned the project. I now have a ziploc bag of overdry but not crispy tomatoes in my refrigerator - wondering what I'm going to do with them.

WOW, That scares me. I was thinking about the excalibur 9 tray unit for next year but wow, I'm not sure now. Has anyone else had the same or similar issue as pixie? I would really like to hear about it. I'm not a very patient person when I've spent that much for something that did as well as a lightbuld in a cardboard box would do. I'm known and sometimes butt of jokes because of my tendancy to over research items before I spend my money on them.
I've ran out of places to research the excalibur besides talking to those who are and have used them. Could have pixie done something wrong (pixie, I'm not picking on you at all) or what. I know I sliced my tomatoes 1/2" thick once and they took 30 hours to dry. I also find after drying tomatoes to toss them into the blender and chop them up good and dry them again for 24 hours. (I like my powder dry)

Mine don't take that long at all Captian, cut the Romas in half and the X on the back skin. Think it is 6 or so hours for the herbed, and they were wet due to the 24 hours wine soak. Temp set at 140 degrees
Doing the first batch of non herbed sun dried today, I will make sure to time and tell.

I've dried a lot of tomatoes in my Excaliber as well, but never tried to make powder out of them. A couple weeks ago, I tried to use a food processor to chop up some big slabs of dried beefsteak tomatoes into smaller bits, and that didn't work at all - the stuff kept sticking to the blades, make a heckuva noise, unbalancing the machine.

Like pixie, I dried tomatoes but never could make them brittle.

I have a brand new 9 rack Excaliber and I dried slices of Rutgers. I checked after 7 hours, still pliable. I left them go overnight, after 24 hours still pliable. I left them go another 6 hours and gave up, and they were still pliable.

I finally gave up on the tomato powder, it was just too time consuming.

Annie

I noticed that my tomatoes are sliced 1/4" thick using the hand held slicer that looks like a small saw. It cuts 9 slices at once and makes things really go fast.
Are most people slicing with a similar device or just using a knife?
I'm not even sure what this slicer I have is called.
???

has anyone ever made a haoemade dehydrator? If so what did you use for the trays? I was thinking about it because I have all the material to put one togeather but the trays.
I hear so much about readily available materials not being food safe. I could buy fiberglass screening but I hear it's not safe to. The size of trays I would like are larger than the ones in most dehydrators so buying from them would be tuff.

Ok, finally taking a chance to let you know the time test for the Excalibur.
Took Romas cut in half X'd skin back, steam blanched 4 mins. Arranged on trays, set temp to 140 and went to bed.
Woke 7.5 hours later, checked maters. All were quite, actually overdone for sun dried type.
As far as my thoughts on making a powder from those, they were still a bit "sticky sweet".
Maybe freezing them before making powder, or removing the skins might be the ticket.

thanks bl
I'll remember that because I'm thinking about purchasing one for next year.
If I were to make afew trays for the dehydrator I have now, does someone know where I might find polycarbonate screening/mesh. it's about the only thing I know that's food safe because this is what companies use for drying trays.
any suggestions?

For home made dryer, stainless steel mesh screen. It is used by the dairy industry.

Make the tray size so the trays fit into the dishwasher.

thanks OS,
I'll write hat down for next year. I really don't like the idea of metal trays for a dehydrator but if that's all that can be used I'll do it.

What about silicone baking sheets cut to your desired size to fit your trays?

Cindy