Apr272010
INSTANT SURVIVAL TIP: From produce to powder
What if you could take the tastiest essence of nearly any fruit or vegetable and put it in a handy form you could use in sauces, soups, salad dressings, and even as a mix-in with yogurt or ice cream. Would you be interested? Well, when you create your own powders from dehydrated produce, that’s exactly the product you end up with!
image by heliosphan
Take a bushel of fresh, juicy vine ripened tomatoes, slice them up, toss them (figuratively) on food dehydrator trays, and a few hours later you get have dehydrated tomato slices, ready for long-term storage. For a perfect homemade tomato powder, just put several slices in a blender, I use a Magic Bullet, push ‘on’ and in moments you have tomato powder. With this powder and a little water, you can make your own tomato paste, tomato sauce, and a tasty tomato based salad dressing. It’s a great backup to the tomato products you have in your pantry.
Try this same trick with dehydrated mushrooms. Stir your mushroom powder in with ground beef for the tastiest meatballs and hamburgers ever or add to gravy. Personally, I love the flavor of jalapenos and have been watching for a good sale so I can try out jalapeno powder in my scrambled eggs.
You have nothing to lose other than a few ounces of dehydrated produce by experimenting a little. Make your own celery and onion powders. Do you love the flavor of eggplant? What might your meatloaf taste like with a little eggplant powder sprinkled in? These homemade powders make experimenting easy and provide yet another reason to dehydrate your own foods!
© 2010, thesurvivalmom. All rights reserved.
(8) Readers Comments
Leave a Reply
How To Dry Shampoo Your Hair to Save Water
My girls and I have long curly hair that has to be washed everyday. B
Win a Copy of Survival Mom AND a FlashLantern!
Bookperks is running this giveaway on their own. I will ask them for
Win a Copy of Survival Mom AND a FlashLantern!
when is the give away closed? how will we know who won?
The Importance of Patient Advocacy
When we went through my mom's final illness, I so wished I could be wi
Anatomy of The Survival Mom's Pantry
Oh my goodness Soren you are hilarious! I guess we had better stock up
shotzeedog
I would like to try making lemon powder.
Stacy
I love this idea! I am going to have to experiment with this! It would be great for onion and garlic powder – something we use a lot of in our house. Thanks for the great idea!
Cessnagal
You can also use the powdered veggies and fruit to make baby food or a puree for those folks with teeth issues!
mike
For those thinking about onion and jalepino watch out. I have essentially tear gassed my own house just dehydrating onions. I also once stove dried peppers and ended up sneezing for months. I'm not saying not to do it. Just consider running that dehydrator in the garage or outside (if weather permits). Hope I can save some discomfort.
Barbara
Yes, always do onions and garlic outside! I did onions in the garage once, and my car smelled of old onion for three months. Lemons and other citrus fruits are wonderful, but you must laboriously peel the membranes between the fingers of fruit, or end up with paper-like bits in your powder. And let those tomatoes rest in a colander for an hour or two after cutting or you'll end up swamping your machine with tomato juice. They have a LOT of water in them.
The next step after vegies is, of course, jerkey. For the hesitant, it's easier than I thought.
oldhouse
Roma tomatoes will not water as badly as some of the other kinds.
Michelle in ID
Perfect timing on this post! I've been contemplating a way to make my own bullion for seasoning rice, making soups, etc. I'm thinking this is the way. Perhaps grinding chicken or beef jerky and mixing with veggie and herb powders would do the trick. I smell an experiment coming. Thanks!
Kelly
I dehyrated all of my excess tomatoes last year. I started doing slices – that is fairly time consuming because I was removing the skins. I don't like the texture of the skins in my soup or casseroles. The dried slices don't pack very tightly, so they take up a fair amount of space in jars. Then I bought a good blender and discovered that I could cut tomatoes up into chunks, puree them skins, seeds and all, and dry that liquid like a fruit leather. Prep time is a fraction of what it was. I dry it to crispy, not leathery, and grind it up in the blender to make tomato powder. It takes much less space to store and is really handy to just dip out a couple of spoons of powder to add to a recipe instead of having to open a whole can of tomatoes.
I started doing the same thing with fruit, although I leave them in the flat leather state. They are yummy to snack on and can easily be broken up to throw in a smoothie. I also tried it with green peppers. The resulting powder looks a little weird, but adds great flavor to a veggie smoothie with a tomato juice base.
Next year I am going to try seasoning the tomato puree before drying so it will be more like a spaghetti sauce.