Tomato products are one of those staple items that tend to need to be replenished often, and one of the easiest crops to grow. Thankfully, they are super versatile, and can be preserved in so many ways! Learning how to dehydrate tomatoes for your pantry shelf can solve any problems you might run into when you are out of your canned tomato products!
Having a well-stocked pantry is 100% necessary for the home cook that is striving to stay away from precooked, prepackaged, and fast food. You might be seeking to create better, more healthy, and flavorful meals like chili and spaghetti without having to run to the store, or worse yet, order in when one item hasn’t yet been replenished.
Whether you are staying away from prepackaged and fast foods for health reasons, weight issues, or because you are avoiding certain types of ingredients (GMOs, or MSG and other weird ingredients), dehydrated foods can help. Learning how to dehydrate and use dehydrated food is honestly one of the BEST things you can do for your kitchen, and for your family table!
Dehydrated tomatoes are so versatile! They can be used in sauces, soups, stews, on pizza…and they can be ground up into powder for a bunch more uses that can really turn out to be a massive help in the kitchen!
How to Dehydrate Tomatoes
Dehydrating tomatoes is a cinch. It can be done every day with minimal effort during the season yours are producing out in the garden. It’s a little messy, but once you get the hang of how easy this is, you will be on your way to putting up tomatoes for as many uses as you already are using canned tomato products–but with less shelf space!
Here are the basic instructions for dehydrating. If you are new to dehydrating, be sure to pop over and read over my How to Dehydrate Food for Beginners post to fill in any blanks that the following recipe doesn’t cover for you. If you know your way around dehydrating, however, the following instructions will work for you just fine.
- Choose paste varieties, like Roma or San Marzano. Wash with water if they are organic. If they are not, wash according to the instructions in this post, under “How to Dehydrate Food: Clean and Prepare the Food”.
- Blanch in boiling water for 30-60 seconds, then transfer to ice water.
- Remove peels and cores (set these aside for later).
- Cut into 1/4″ thick slices and arrange on a tray.
- Dry at 145 degrees until crisp.
- Store in jars with air-tight lids.
Use your dehydrated tomatoes in soups and sauces, or combine with other vegetables to make spice mixes or for flavor. Ground up, you can use these tomatoes to make powder for sauces, pastes, or even ketchup!
To grind them up, you can throw dried tomatoes into a blender or food processor and pulse until they are a smooth powder. Label and store, and use within 30 days.
Zero-Waste Tomato Powder
Don’t throw out those peels and cores just yet! In the same way you grind up your tomatoes to make powder, you can do the same with the parts you would throw into the trash or compost pile! Give it a try and see which type of powder you like best!
To make zero-waste tomato powder, dehydrate the peels and cores until crunchy in texture. Grind up in a blender or food processor, label and store. Use within 30 days.
How to Use Dehydrated Tomatoes in Everyday Meals
There are tons of uses for dehydrated tomatoes! Rehydrate to use in soups, stews, chilis, (cooked) salsas, or even on top of pizza!
Rehydrating Tomatoes
Rehydrating is one of the areas that some get hung up on. Let’s not let that happen to you with your tomatoes. Here’s how you do it:
- Place tomatoes in bowl of cool water (you can use boiling if you would like them to rehydrate quicker, and if you are using them in a dish where they will be cooked).
- Wait 30-60 minutes.
- Drain and use.*
*Tomatoes double in size when rehydrated, so if you rehydrate 1 cup, you will have two once they are finished reconstituting.
But that’s not all! Remember the tomato powder we talked about earlier? You can use the above mentioned tomato powder to make:
- tomato paste, 6 oz: 6 Tbsp powder + 1/2 cup water + 1/2 tsp salt
- tomato sauce, 8 oz: 1/3 cup powder + 1 cup water + 1/4 tsp salt
- tomato juice, 64 oz: 2/3 cup powder + 8 cups water + 1 tsp salt
- ketchup: 6 Tbsp powder + 1 cup water + 1-1/4 tsp salt + 1/4 tsp onion powder + 1/8 tsp garlic powder + 1/4 cup honey + 1/3 cup white vinegar. Simmer for 20 minutes.
Tomatoes are one of the most versatile vegetables to dehydrate and have on the shelf!
I put up a lot of canned tomato’s in the pantry, I have always dried the skins/seeds from my sauces and dried them for making the powder and using them in soups and stews. I love drying little tiny tomato’s for all the amazing recipes that call for sun dried tomato’s.
I have to admit that I have never done them in bulk amounts to use them as dried powder. I do a lot of drying of different foods but have always limited my tomato drying time. I will have to give a bit more space in my dryer in the coming year to try a few of these things.
I have made it before to make a on the trail camping hot tomato soup to sip while hiking or camping.. its so good 🙂
That’s awesome! I heard about using the tomato skins and cores for powder long ago, but I had no idea what to do with the powder until I learned more. It’s such an awesome thing to have on hand, isn’t it? Makes life so much easier!
I didn’t have a magnificent crop of tomatoes this year as it was (believe it or not) too hot – hopefully next summer will see higher yields and I will have excess that I can dry. I have dried them in the past and love the rich flavour they give to dishes. Tomato powder sounds really interesting so I hope I can give that a go too. Pinned for future reference!
Thanks Rosie! Tomato powder has revolutionized my kitchen!
I know what you mean about it being too hot for tomatoes. Poor tomato plants just don’t do well in our 100+ degree weather, but once it started cooling down, much better!
I think this would make a magnificient video for YouTube. I don’t have a garden but I can do this when tomatoes are plentiful. I love fresh tomatoes in salads. Have you ever frozen the dried tomatoes so they keep longer?
Hey Monetta! No, I sure haven’t. They should keep about a year on the shelf, especially if you were to use a vacuum sealer with oxygen absorbers as I’ve mentioned in my “How to Dehydrate Food for Beginners” post (link below). According to some, dehydrated food can last MUCH MUCH longer than a year, but since I’m funny about flavor and texture, I usually try to use mine within a year. 🙂
https://stonefamilyfarmstead.com/how-to-dehydrate-food/
Thanks for your comments, and I’d love to see your video if you make one!
We do dehydrated tomatoes at the end of the season and of course keep tomato powder on hand. Really helps use up the end of the year bounty for storage and nothing goes to waste.
YES! I love no-waste ideas!
Hi Kristi,
Tomatoes are something most people use for many different recipes and must have fruit. I have read before that dehydrating some foods is much healthier and takes less work. I love the zero waste way of doing things. You have given really good instructions and explained each step in to make it easy to follow , I had never heard about easy using the powder and skins in the way you have suggested but it sure sounds like it would work. I would definitely be trying this except I have a food allergies to tomatoes, but I sure will let other people I know about these methods. .
I definitely believe in staying away from precooked or any packaged food as much as possible. Try to make as much from scratch as I can.. Thank for your great article that I will be sharing!
Oh, I’m sorry to hear about your food allergies! Tomatoes are a huge staple in most kitchens, it must be hard to find a way around them! I agree with staying away from prepackaged foods. I’m a total convenience food person and really struggling to finding ways to make my home-grown foods convenient!
Thank you so much for your kind comments, Marla! And thank you for sharing!
Very helpful article on dehydrating! My garden was a big fail this year…unfortunately didn’t get enough to put up! Hopefully with a better plan next year I’ll have more veggies.
That happens sometimes, Shawna! It’s hard to get to the “sweet spot” of how and when to plant things, and how to care for them in our microclimate, but once we do, it’s very sweet! I’m still learning myself, so take heart, you can do this! 🙂
I love the no-waste idea! My garden was terrible due to an overabundance of rain and entirely too high temperatures this year. Becayse of this our tomato harvest was zero?. Hopefully this next year will allow for a much better harvest!
I never knew you could use the skins and core when dehydrating. That’s great information! I can’t wait to try my hands at the homemade ketchup. Since my comfort food is grilled cheese and tomato soup, the recipes you shared will come in handy! One question though, have you ever tried dehydrating the heirloom varieties? Curious if they would be as successful.
Yes! I do it all the time! Actually, all of the tomatoes I grow are heirloom, but I think you are probably asking if we can dehydrate non-paste tomatoes like beefsteak and cherry? Yep, you totally can. I use them the same was I use paste tomatoes, but for the person who only does paste tomatoes this way, it would probably be different. I’ve not been exclusively using paste tomatoes, so I don’t know the difference!
I need to add this to my preserving routine! I love the idea of dehydrating my cherry tomatoes- I always have WAY too many of them!!!!! I also like the tomato powder idea, that sounds VERY handy.
It is SUPER handy, Joy! I love using it, it feels so ‘zero-wastey’ to me and gives me tons of satisfaction! Thanks for visiting!
Great info, Kristi! I like to dry tomatoes to make tomato paste and to put in olive oil to store in the fridge. Yum 🙂
Ohh, neat ideas! I need to get those recipes from you, girl!
I start dehydrating tomatoes late in season when they aren’t as big. They get dehydrated and some made into powder
That’s a great idea, Candy. I’m dehydrating the ones I’m allowing to ripen on the vine right now.
I often dehydrated my excess tomatoes and made sort of a “sun dried” tomato but never made tomato powder. Thanks for the good ideas!
That’s a great idea! I don’t really know how to use sun-dried tomatoes, but I’d love to learn. The powder is awesome!
HI Kristi,
I think dehydrated food is one of the best and easiest ways to preserve them at least most foods. Thanks for sharing your valuable information.. I used to dehydrate quite a few fruits but had never tried tomatoes or making the powder.
Oh, the powder is the absolute best. I thought it was a really weird idea until I did it and started using it! Now I won’t be without it!
I dehydrated tomatoes for the first time last year – a variety called Principe Borghese. They were delicious! I will be trying this for more varieties this year!
That’s awesome! I haven’t heard of that variety before. What I’ve found is that there are SO many uses for my dried tomatoes, and I am so happy to have learned this!
I have a huge amount of tiny cherry tomatoes. Would you share how you dry them? I would love to use them for ‘sun dried tomatoes.’ Thank you.
Tamera
Hi Tamera. Sure–it’s pretty much the same, just less time, and only cut them in half! Good luck!
Can tomatoes be dried with the skin on?
Oh yes, they sure can, Candace!