Sunday, June 1, 2014

Dried Tomato Powder

In the summer of 2012, I wrote a blog entry about the tomatoes I dried during one of our years of extreme drought.  

As you can see in that article, I ended up with a jar full of dried tomato slices.  I put these on a shelf in my pantry intending to find a recipe in which I could use them.  Unfortunately, other canned goods got put on the shelf in front of them and they were "out of sight, out of mind".  I forgot all about them until I ran across them earlier this spring when I was cleaning out my pantry!

I was disgusted with myself.  Sigh.  However, upon closer inspection, they appeared fine.  The jar they were in had a rubber seal and they had not been opened since the day I put them in the jar.   So, now, what to do with them?

I recalled reading somewhere that you could grind dried tomatoes into a powder that could be used in chili, meatloaves, soups, sauces and so forth.  This is what I decided to do with them.

I dug out my coffee grinder (which I have not used to grind coffee beans in years).


I generally use it to grind dried herbs into powder.  But, this time I loaded it full of the dried tomato slices and whirled away.  This is what they looked like afterwards.


I could only grind a few tomatoes at a time, so it took several batches to get them all processed.  To store the powder, I used an empty spice jar that I saved after the spice was gone and labeled it with the new contents.  Okay, so I probably could have used better penmanship when labeling the jar.  I'm sure I was in a hurry to finish cleaning my pantry.  Ha!  NOT.


I've put the jar with my spices, so I see it every time I retrieve the ingredients I need for a recipe.  Hopefully, I won't forget about it.

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