Tomatoes for 2025

[Branching Out]

I am Thrilled to discover how useful the dehydrated tomatoes that I made a few months ago have become!
I Heartily recommend dehydrating them!
You could freeze them in bags if you like, or store in canning jars, which is what I did.
When I put them in a crock pot with a roast they end up dissolving and flavoring, even the seeds dissolved, which bowled me over!

We are finding dried tomatoes to be useful too! We dried some tomatoes a couple of years ago and they were so desiccated that they were almost like leather-- so this past summer we dried them a bit less. Then we froze them on a parchment-lined tray, and popped them in glass jars in the freezer; they shrink up so much once they're dry that they hardly take any room at all. Yesterday I thawed some out and ate them on toast, and they were tangy and delicious. I think there is potential for a good BLT, and certainly as a pizza topping.

I also believe selecting the right variety can make a big difference. Looking for cultivars that are described as 'drying tomatoes.' From our experience I can recommend Fiaschetto di Manduria, which is a prolific determinate cultivar. It produces a bumper crop all at once, and then you can pull the plants and flip the bed to something else (such as a crop of snap beans) in mid-summer. Zeedman's post re: Elfin tomatoes makes me think that Elfins may be good for drying as well, as they seem to dry down naturally rather than rotting in storage.

 

[ducks4you]

@Branching Out , I think you are right about dehydrating determinates, I just didn't grow any last year.
They Are on my schedule to grow this year, and I Will be dehydrating, since it was DH who asked for and received the most excellent Excalibur dehydrator a year ago.

 

[Zeedman]

Some dehydrated tomatoes can be ground into tomato powder, which is really good for turning a bland soup into something delicious (as are dried sweet peppers). This is also a good way to use tomatoes that have a tough skin when dry. When I dehydrate large numbers of "Elfin", I divide them into zippered snack bags & freeze them. They keep for a long time in the freezer (which is IMO the best way to store dried tomatoes). To add them to a soup, I just whiz them in a blender with a little purified water until finely chopped, then add them to the soup or casserole that I'm trying to improve.