Dehydrating Canned Diced Tomatoes
Thought I'd pass along a tip for extending the shelf life of expiring cans of diced tomatoes. BTW, I finally got my Excalibur a couple of months back and have been itching to use it.
I realized today that I had about 40 cans of diced tomatoes that were due to expire this month. I know that they are good well beyond the expiration date, especially since I keep them in a root cellar, but I needed to make room on the shelves for some other things. So, I decided to dehydrate them. I simply poured the diced tomatoes into a strainer and let the juice drain into a pot. After about 20 cans and a full dehydrator, I had about a gallon and a half of juice, so then I started simmering the juice until I had tomato paste, which I will use for pizza this weekend. I plan on making tomato powder with the dehydrated tomatoes.
I've also got some #10 cans of fruit that I'm going to do the same thing with. And, I've got several gallons of frozen berries from last year that I need to use up. I'll make syrup with some of them and dehydrate the rest. Gotta free up some space in the freezer for this year's berries.
