how to make tomato paste powder from tomato peels

During tomato canning season last year, I had a friend casually say “Don’t forget to save your peels to make into tomato paste!” The idea of saving my peels for anything other than chicken scraps completely overwhelmed me. Needless to say, I did not take her advice. This year, however, I felt much more comfortable in my canning and I decided to add a new step and learn how to make tomato paste powder from tomato peels.

Dehydrating tomato peels and making a paste out of them may seem like a pretty obvious thing to do, but there are a few tips and tricks that I learned along the way, so I hope this post is helpful to you!

Step 1: peel the tomatoes

Okay, duh, obviously this is the first step. You will of course be doing this while you are preparing them for canning. If your canning kitchen is anything like mine (chaos!) then you don’t need to be worrying about step 2 yet. Just put your peels in a Tupperware or mason jar and stick them in the fridge for now.

One tip for this step is to try to take the peel off in large pieces. It makes loading the dehydrator much quicker when you do not have a million little strips of peel that you are trying to untangle from each other.

Step 2: dehydrate the tomatoes

This step will, obviously, depend on your dehydrator and how many peels you have. I had peels from about 40 lbs of tomatoes, so it took me about 5 batches to dehydrate the peels in my Dehydro. (Note: My Dehydro is a much simpler model than the one linked here.)

When you lay out the tomato peels onto the dehydrator trays, make sure not to overlap the peels. Also, try to lay them with the outside facing down so that the part of the peel that was on the outside of the tomato is the side making contact with the tray. If you lay them the other way, the peels are much more likely to stick to the trays. You will know they are done dehydrating when they are brittle to the touch.

After a batch is done dehydrating, simply place your peels in a bowl or mason jar until they are all done. Each batch took about 2 to 4 hours in our dehydrator.

Step 3: grind the peels into a powder

Once your peels have all been dehydrated, make your powder by grinding them in your food processor or blender. Our food processor worked great for this.

Step 4: use and store your tomato paste powder

Store your tomato paste powder in a mason jar. I labeled mine and stuck it in the fridge, just to be safe. I don’t use tomato paste all that often, and I want the powder to last as long as possible.

To use your powder, simply stir together 1 tablespoon of powder to 3 tablespoons of water. (So 1 tablespoon of powder will yield about 1/4 cup of paste.) Let the water/ powder mixture sit for a couple of minutes so that the powder can absorb the water. Give it one more stir, then use it like you would tomato paste- to add to sauces or thicken soups, stews, or chili.

I hope you found this information helpful as you make your own tomato paste powder from tomato peels!

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