We have been blessed this summer with an ample supply of tomatoes. Our freezer is full of tomato sauce, puree, marinara sauce, and slow roasted tomatoes. I’ve also dried lots of these red jewels and Dave’s made ketchup. So I thought I’d try making leather again. I made some several years ago but it didn’t turn out well and I wasn’t sure what to do with it.
But this year I have a couple ideas and since we have an abundance of tomatoes, I decided to make the leather. I used about 9 pounds of tomatoes to make five sheets of leather.
I made them three different ways.
The first recipe called for adding apple sauce. Ewe! That sounds terrible but thought I’d go ahead and try it anyway. Since we’ve not made our own apple sauce yet this year, I purchased some organic at the store.
To get started we need to puree the tomatoes. I just threw the tomatoes in the Vitamix, skins and all.
Blend them until it’s tomato juice. In the Vitamix it doesn’t take long at all.
Pour into sauce pan.
Now cook until you have reduced the amount of liquid by half. That took me about two hours. This will make it thick and just right for drying.
If using apple sauce, mix 1 cup of tomato puree with 1 cup of apple sauce. This will make one sheet of tomato leather.
Once it is mixed up, the leather sheets need to be sprayed with cooking spray.
Then we’re ready to pour the tomato/apple mixture.
I then spread out the mixture on the sheet trying to get it to be level for even drying.
My dehydrator has a setting for leather (135 degrees). Check your dehydrator for temperatures.
Then after about 20 hours you will have tomato leather.
I cut it up into fourths and store in a ziploc bag in the pantry. I mentioned at the beginning that I made them three different ways. The first was the one with the applesauce. The second recipe used two cups of tomato puree and 2 teaspoons of cornstarch. This mixture needed to cook on the stove until it was thickened and then poured on the sheet. The last was just pouring the puree on the sheets with no additives. And here are the results.
In the above picture are my three different recipes. Starting at the top clockwise we have the tomato puree, the tomato and cornstarch, and the tomato and applesauce.
First of all I have to say that the tomato/applesauce leather dried as a leather. It also was good and you can’t really taste the applesauce. The tomato with cornstarch added was very brittle. The plain tomato puree was not quite as leathery as the tomato/applesauce blend, but it was close.
I have made this before and it didn’t turn out well. It was because I didn’t cook the tomatoes down. Cooking them down made the puree thick with less water so it dried firmer. When I do this again, I will just make it with the puree.
Now to use this tomato leather. I can just imagine this winter having a BLT with this leather instead of those icky store tomatoes. Well, to tell you the truth we rarely buy tomatoes out of season so it will be nice to have the tomato taste on the sandwich. Also, it can be broken up and added to salads or just eaten like apple or blackberry fruit leather. We’ll see how much of it we use this winter. If it’s at all like the dried tomatoes, I probably should make some more before the tomatoes are gone.
I have never heard of tomato leather. This is so interesting. I bet it’s definitely good on a sandwich in place of the hot house tomatoes. Thanks so much for sharing at the All Star Block Party.
Holly, Thanks for coming by and commenting. Lynda
It amazes me how you constantly come up with things here that I’ve never heard about 🙂 A tomatoe leather sandwich sounds good! Though I’m a big fan of dried tomatoes as well, I love them with pasta, salads or even sandwiches.
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Kristina, thanks for the compliment. Well, when we have so many tomatoes, we need to think a bit outside the box!
Thank you so much! I realize it was originally posted over a decade ago but your trial-&-error experience has been a great help for me. Our Roma tomatoes were…less than successful this season. They were tiny, odd-shaped and fell off the plants before they were even ripe most of the time, so I’d have 10-12 little tomatoes every few days. I couldn’t can them (who wants to peel tomatoes a little bigger than a cherry tomato?). Your post was just what I needed to support my fruit leather idea! I can also use any brittle results for powder and/or paste! (Add 1 cup of boiling water to rehydrate them.)
Thank you again!!
Valerie, You are so welcome. Yes, it’s been a long time since I wrote that post. Glad it helped. We freeze our tomatoes but we do can our ketchup, and we never peel our tomatoes anymore. We wash them good, take out the core, and then pop them in the Vitamix and blend them up. The skin is pulverized so you can’t even tell it was still on the tomatoes. Makes it so much easier than dipping them in hot water and peeling the skins!! Thanks for dropping by.