Dehydrating Tomatoes...

 Dehydrating...I love it almost as much as canning.  LOL!  It saves space, it's easy and so useful.  I had a lot of tomatoes from the garden this past summer and after a while I got tired of canning them and not wanting to waste them I finished them up by dehydrating them.  Let me tell you, they are so yummy this way.

I started by slicing my tomatoes about 1/4" thick.  You don't want them too thick but also not too thin.  Tomatoes have tons of water in them so if they are too thin they pretty much just disappear in the dehydrator.

 Once completely dried you can grind them into powder.  The green on is parsley but the other is my tomato powder.  It takes a lot of tomatoes for grinding but tomato powder is great for thickening soups and stews or just to sprinkle for added flavor.  I always try to keep it on hand. 

 This is one of my jars of dehydrated tomato slices.  Oh my how I love these!  Shew...  These are also great for soups, stews, chili, and hydrate fairly well.  Of course, dehydrated things never go back exactly as they were before but close.  I also love eating them straight from the jar or crumble over a salad.  The taste is very powerful.  I love them!!!

 As you can see they are beautiful in color. 

 They dehydrate really thin as these were sliced about 1/4" thick.

 They store well in a wide mouth mason jar or a storage bag. 

 I either store mine with oxygen absorbers or seal my jars with a jar sealer that removes all of the oxygen and keeps them crisp.  I will post more about how I store my dehydrated items in a later post.  

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