Storing the tomatoes for winter-spring use

Our outdoor Gardeners Delight toms are producing more than we can use at present and with rain leading to possible splitting and the possibility of frosts arriving soon I've started to pick and dehydrate as soon as they ripen. This lot - three dehydrator trays of them were picked at the just before red stage and ripened indoors. There's more coming on and I'll pick them in a day or two and ripen indoors.
As you'll see from the pics dehydrating results in a very marked reduction in size and weight, but they'll be great in stews, bread, pizza, bolognese.

[align=center]Tomatoes halved and ready to dry
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[align=center]About 10 hours later after drying at 70F [/align]
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You could also puree and chutney them. Also, they can be frozen for use in cooking.:thumb:

 

Making me hungry there Dave, that looks a great result. Tried oven drying some green toms, they just went mouldy.

How does your contraption work ?

 

Ziggy - In essence it's a thermostatically contolled fan heater that blows hot air (I can set the temperature) up through perforated trays. It's a very efficient way of removing of removing the water content in all sorts of fruit and veg. I've got some shelled french beans drying as I write and I'll be drying some pears soon.
If your green toms went mouldy you probably handn't dried them for long enough.

Dai - we do use quite a few in soups which we often freeze and we've also made chutney though this year haven't the time for the latter. We have also frozen toms in the past, but they take up a lot of space whereas the dehydrated ones are just popped into self-seal bags and take up no space at all and keep for ages. We are still using some of last years dried crop!

 

Great pics Dave and thank you for that.
I just freeze mine and use them in soups, stews and sauces as required - but I do prefer them fresh.
Does anyone else use a dehydrator ?

 

Cheers for that Dave, could be the way to go. Not got around to building that solar drier that I was on about earlier. Wish I'd never dismantled the first one, mind you, that used to caramelise things when it got over 45c.