I just used Durgan’s method to make tomato powder with the exception that I removed the skins and seeds before I put the slurry in the dehydrator. I will get a finer powder than if I left the skins and seeds, and I personally think the taste of the powder is less bitter without the seeds and skins. You can see the quantity of seeds and stems removed as they exit the Victorio strainer.
I used 25 lbs of tomatoes and got 25 cups of tomato juice. According to my high math that works out to 1 cup of juice per pound of tomatoes. I used all kinds of tomatoes, at least 50 different varieties. After seeing Durgan’s method listed above, I went out and bought 5 shallow cooking trays that are supposed to be stick resistant. They are not Teflon but hopefully will work. I also went out and got a nylon spatula. I put 3 cups of juice into 4 pans and 4 cups into the 5th pan. I had 9 cups left over that I am going to make sauce with.
I ran the Excalibur dehydrator at 135°F for 8 hours and the juice was still quite sticky.
I let the juice sit in the dehydrator overnight and ran it another 8 hours a 135°. The texture was like fruit leather. I used the nylon spatula and was able to extract the sheets of tomato leather out of each tray intact. I flipped the sheets over and gave them another 8 hours in the dehydrator at the same temperature. This time all the trays except the tray with 4 cups were nice and crispy. I had to run the tray with 4 cups another 8 hours to get it crispy.
Once I had all the sheets of tomato crispy I ran them through my little Ninja and turned them into powder. I got 13 teaspoons of powder out of each of the 3 cup trays and 16 teaspoons of powder out of the tray with 4 cups. That works out to almost 23 tablespoons of powder from 25 lbs of tomatoes. That’s a little less than 1 tablespoon per pound of tomatoes. Now I need to figure out what to do with all this tomato powder. It is VERY concentrated.
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