Preserving Your Tomatoes: Tomato Leather

Do you have gobs and gobs of tomatoes and you’re not sure what to do with them? Your food storage shelves are already full of salsa and spaghetti sauce, now what? Tomato leather to the rescue!

Tomato leather is basically like having a fruit roll up made out of dehydrated pureed tomatoes. Tomato leather can be easily reconstituted for use in anything tomatoes are used for: soups and stews, marinara or spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce, tomato sauce or paste. It can also simply be eaten plain or made into a powder to sprinkle on salads, garlic bread, or eggs.

To make tomato leather:

De-seed tomatoes and puree in a food processor or blender until smooth. In a large pot, simmer tomatoes down 1-3 hours until they are about half their original size and the tomato puree is thick.

Spread puree evenly on fruit leather dehydrator tray or parchment-lined tray. In dehydrator, dehydrate according to your dehydrator’s instructions for fruit leather. In oven, dehydrate at your oven’s lowest temperature setting for 6-12 hours.

To reconstitute tomato leather:

Tear up tomato leather and place in the bottom of a sauce pan. Add just enough water to almost cover the tomato leather (easier to add water than to boil out water, so start with less).

Simmer water and leather together, adding more water little by little if needed or boiling out water if needed until the tomatoes are the right consistency.

Store tomato leather in an airtight ziplock bag in the pantry, or vacuum seal it, or put it in a jar or mylar bag with an oxygen absorber for longer term storage.