TOMATO SAUCE LEATHER
The secret ingrediente italiano per deliziosi pasti used to make Italian-style backpacking meals such as Unstuffed Peppers, Seafood Raminara, Spinach & Bean Raminara, and Macaroni with Cheesy Tomato Sauce.
Method:
Start with your grandma’s homemade tomato sauce recipe or buy a jar of Marinara Sauce (Barilla® Spicy Marina). Run the tomato sauce through a blender to a smoothie-like consistency. Blending any chunks of tomatoes or other vegetables in the sauce thickens the sauce so it will make better leather. Add back more dehydrated vegetables to these recipes later.
Avoid Cheese. A little olive oil in the ingredients won’t cause early spoilage, but avoid drying cheesy sauces like Vodka Sauce or Three-Cheese Sauce. The cheese adds fat which may shorten the shelf life of the leather. Cheesy sauces can be dried for short term use. The end product will feel greasier and more crumbly than cheese-less dried marinara sauce. A safer bet is to add cheddar cheese powder or parmesan cheese to the meal rather than to the leather.
Dehydrate: Spread the sauce thinly on dehydrator trays covered with non-stick Paraflexx® sheets, parchment paper, or the fruit-roll sheets that came with your dehydrator. Don’t use wax paper because the wax melts. I pour about eight fluid ounces onto each Excalibur Dehydrator tray and spread uniformly to the edges.
Dehydrate at 135° for six to eight hours or you may dry at 125° for eight to ten hours with equally good results. Dehydrating times may vary depending on dehydrator model and humidity.
Flip. After about five hours, the sauce should be solidified enough for you to peel it off the trays and flip it over for the duration on the drying time. Remove the non-stick sheets during the latter drying stage so both sides of the leather are exposed to the hot air. If you start the drying process before going to bed or work, the leather will turn out fine if you don’t flip it. It just may take a little longer to dry and you can always flip and dry it for an hour or so to finish the job when you get to it. The finished product will be leathery and dry to the touch, not sticky.
Allow the leather to cool and then tear it into pieces. Store leather in a jar with a tight fitting lid until you are ready to pack it in plastic bags for a backpacking trip. Good for at least six months. The colour turns a little darker over time.
When combined with an equal part of hot water, leather will turn back into tomato sauce.
Salsa Leather. Blend and dry salsa the same way as tomato sauce. Create a tasty Mexican-style meal with rice, chicken and/or black beans, vegetables such as bell peppers and corn, and salsa leather.
RECIPES USING LEATHER
Unstuffed Peppers
At Home: Combine in 4 x 6 plastic bag: ½ Cup dried or instant rice, ¼ Cup ground beef, dried, ¼ Cup bell peppers, dried
Pack separately in 2 x 3 plastic bags: ¼ Cup tomato sauce leather, tightly packed, 2 Tbsp parmesan cheese.
At Camp: Combine all ingredients except parmesan cheese in pot with 1¼ cups water and soak for five minutes. Light stove, bring to a boil, and continue cooking with the lid on for one minute. Remove pot from stove and wait ten minutes. Insulate pot if possible. Stir in parmesan cheese before serving.
TOMATO POWDER
To make the most flavourful tomato powder, cook a batch of well-seasoned tomato sauce first. While dried tomatoes can be ground into powder, too, they won’t include the built-in taste that you can simmer into a sauce. The main ingredient in tomato powder is, of course, tomatoes. Roma and San Marzano tomatoes are meaty and make good sauce. Since it is often hard to find ripe tomatoes at the store, this sauce was made from canned diced tomatoes.
Method:
Six 14.5 ounce cans of diced tomatoes (or equivalent fresh tomatoes). Run diced tomatoes through a blender to a smoothie-like consistency. It will take two fills.
Transfer sauce to a stock pot and add all seasonings
1 Tbsp Garlic Powder
2 tsp Salt
2 tsp Sugar
1 tsp Onion Powder
½ tsp Pepper
1 tsp Red Pepper Flakes *
1½ Tbsp Dried Basil
2 tsp Dried Oregano
2 tsp Dried Parsley
4 Bay Leaves
2 Tbsp Red Wine Vinegar
Bring sauce to a light boil over medium high heat, then reduce heat to low. Simmer uncovered for sixty to ninety minutes. Sauce will thicken as liquid evaporates. Once the sauce it nice and thick, allow it to cool.
Dehydrate: This recipe yields five to six cups of thick sauce, which can be dried on five Excalibur dehydrator trays. Remove bay leaves. Spread between one and one-and-a-quarter cups of tomato sauce thinly on each dehydrator tray covered with a non-stick sheet. Caution: Spreading too much sauce on a tray will make a thick leather that will take longer to dry and won’t reduce to tomato powder as well.
Dehydrate @ 135° F (57° C) for approximately ten hours. After about six hours, the tomato leather should be dry enough to remove the non-stick sheets. Flip the non-stick sheets over onto the mesh sheets and peel the non-stick sheets away from the leather. Finish drying on the mesh sheets. The drying time to make leather that will be ground into tomato powder is a couple hours longer than the time required to dry tomato leather that will be used as is. When completely dry, you should be able to easily snap or tear it into smaller pieces.
Blend Tomato Leather into Tomato Powder: Tear leather into smaller pieces and reduce to tomato powder in a blender. Work with small quantities so as not to overheat your blender.
The backpacking recipes call for either ¼ or ⅓ cup of tomato sauce leather, depending on the serving size. The chart below shows the equivalent amount of tomato powder to use.
¼ cup leather = 2 Tbsp powder (20 grams)
⅓ cup leather = 2½ Tbsp powder (25 grams)
The total yield of this tomato powder recipe, which starts with six 14.5 ounce cans of diced tomatoes, is approximately twenty-four tablespoons of tomato powder, enough for ten to twelve backpacking meals that call for sauce.
How to Reconstitute Tomato Powder. Combine ¼ cup (40 g) tomato powder with 1¼ cups of water. Bring to a light boil and then remove pot from heat. Wait fifteen minutes or longer. Sauce thickens with time. Add more water a tablespoon at a time for a thinner sauce. Stir in a spoonful of extra virgin olive oil if desired. This amount will be enough for two to three servings of pasta, depending on how saucy you like your pasta.
Macaroni with Beef & Vegetables (serves 1)
At Home: Combine in 4 x 6 plastic bag ½ cup Precooked & Dried Macaroni, ¼ cup Dried Ground Beef, ¼ cup Dried Vegetables (Try a mix of dried bell peppers and dried olives), 2 Tbsp Tomato Powder. Optional: Include a packet of parmesan cheese for a topping.
In Camp: Combine all ingredients with 1½ cups water in pot and soak for five minutes. Light stove, bring to a boil, and continue cooking with the lid on for one minute. Place pot in an insulating pot cozy and wait ten to fifteen minutes. Top with parmesan cheese when serving, if desired. Extra Virgin Olive oil can be added also.
DEHYDRATING TOMATOES
A great way of dehydrating tomatoes is to dry them in halves. San Marzano tomatoes, with their oblong shape and meaty texture, are perfect tomatoes for drying. Big Boy and Better Boy tomatoes are too fat to dry in halves; they are better suited to dicing or slicing, which is covered further down the page.
The benefit of drying tomatoes with the half-cut, is that all of the flavours in the juices remain inside the tomatoes as they dry. It takes several hours longer to dry tomatoes this way, but the taste will amaze you. They make great snacks, like what you could call tomato jerky, but the dried halves can also be cut into smaller pieces to use in meals.
Cut tomatoes in half lengthwise.
Using a sharp knife, cut out white pithy sections between both ends of the tomatoes, being careful not to cut all the way through the tomatoes. If you leave the pithy section in there, it tends to dry hard and is not desirable.
Seasoning: After you cut out the white part, sprinkle seasonings onto each tomato half, and then gently push the seasonings down into the juicy middle sections of the tomatoes with a knife or spoon. Of course, you can dry tomatoes sans seasonings. You can add any seasonings that you like. The mix below will give the tomatoes an Italian flair, and your kitchen will smell wonderful while the tomatoes are drying.
Add the following dry seasonings to a bowl, and rub them between your fingers to mix the flavours well. Sprinkle as desired onto tomatoes and push the seasoning into the juices with a knife or spoon. Add a drop or two of red wine vinegar to each tomato after you add the dry seasonings.
Combine: 1 tsp Salt, 1 tsp Basil, 1 tsp Oregano, ½ tsp Garlic Powder, ¼ tsp Pepper, 2 Tbsp Red Wine Vinegar (add last)
Dehydrate. Approximately 15 hours @ 135° F (57° C). Times will vary depending on the thickness of the tomatoes and other factors like humidity in the surrounding environment. A dehydrator with a fan is a must, or the tomatoes won’t dry properly.
Because the tomato halves are thicker than diced or sliced tomatoes, you may only be able to use every other tray of your dehydrator.
If you plan to dry the tomatoes for home-use snacking, you can leave a little moisture in the tomatoes, but store them in the refrigerator.
For trail use, allow the dried tomatoes to get almost crispy, so they keep well. Store in an air-tight container until ready to pack for a trip.
If noticeable moisture remains in the tomato halves after sixteen hours, consider cutting them into smaller pieces, and continue drying for another hour or two.
The easiest way to cut the dried tomato halves into smaller pieces is with scissors.
Make a salty and savory trail mix to your backpacking menu with olives.