SUN Drying

[Conscious Midwife]

So i live in TN temperature got as high as 97 yesterday...

Before throwing out/ giving away my Pampered Chef stones I was wondering

can I thinly slice tomatoes and let them become "sundried' on a stone. Or would the stone temp accumulate a heat greater than 115 degrees?

Would all day drying of food outside work anyway, for the sundried effect, o any foods?

Just trying to find a dehydrating option unitl after class when I plan to make all my big purchases.

[rawpriestess]

originally sun drying was done on stones, for flat breads and such, all ovens were simply stones left in the sun, then later, they added heat, because there wasn't always enough sun, so yes, this would work beautifully, keep a thermometer nearby to test your food, doesn't matter what temp the stone is, it matters what the food is, also wind is important in drying, and keeping off the critters, so maybe netting is good too, or wind, usually in wind, you won't have bugs.

[Conscious Midwife]

Thanks

I'm going to practice with some tomatoes and the remainder of an egg plant this week. It's gonna be super hot again today, plus I really like the look and feel of my stones you know the earthiness of them.

[veganman]

Thanks for posting this Lifeagift.

I have been wondering about sundrying tomatoes, but I don't have any stones. Does anyone have any suggestions?

[Conscious Midwife]

Stones are relatively cheap at Walmart and kitchen stores

You can also by a paver or garden stone from Home Depot or Lowes for less.

Surely just as clean just not as smooth.

[Scarlett]

Hi there. Thanks so much for this info. I too was wondering how to get sundried tomatoes. This site is a wealth of information.
Thx
Scarlett

[veganman]

Stones are relatively cheap at Walmart and kitchen stores

You can also by a paver or garden stone from Home Depot or Lowes for less.

Surely just as clean just not as smooth.

By stones, are you referring to the type found HERE (https://www.pamperedchef.com/ordering/prod_details.tpc?prodId=163&words=stones)?

[Conscious Midwife]

Yes

Pampered Chef has really cool kitchen gadgets

I use to rep for them or act as a consultant, brief stint neat gifts and a bit of fun for a season.

Anyway see if any folks around the office, or thru your church/ synagogue are having a PC party. That's the best way to see the tools in action. BEWARE the consultants and cookbooks usually promote a high SAD and quickie processed food diet.

Some items are a bit pricey others are comparable to what you'd find in good kitchen stores.

You can also order direct on line without a consultant, prices are the same.

My favorites are:

apple peeler corer slicer
food chopper
round large stone
garlic press
serrated bread knife ( great on my tomatoes)
cheese grater ( use it on nuts now)

just to name a few.

[pamojamo]

I live in Tennessee also (Nashville). Please let me know how it goes when you sun-dry tomatoes on stones. I've got a Pampered Chef stone as well, and in a few weeks I'm expecting a bumper crop of tomotoes.

[Conscious Midwife]

Ok

gonna go buy cheese cloth today to protect my creation from the flies

I'll season tomatoes tonight and let sit in fridge

If they dry in 2-3 hours first thing tommorow great if not I won't be home to monitor the temp. but I'll have my teen do a high noon check

If this work then i'm good thru July and August 'cause it's hella hot this summer

Now that I think about it folks I lived around in Colorado use to sun dry all sorts of food on what looked like a thin clothes line. They were Mexican, and I seem to remember mostly jalapenos, tomatoes and maybe bell peppers.

i'll research this further, 'cause with the skin intact maybe the bugs ill stay away.

[Conscious Midwife]

Sun Drying
minimized for page space
google Agriculture extension at Univ of Il it comes up

Juliebove below has a more concise link

[Conscious Midwife]

SUN DRYING
minimized for page space
google Clemson Extension and it comes up

Juliebove below has a good link :D

[veganman]

LifeAGift - great info!

Question - how does one check the temp of tomatoes when they are so thin? How thin to you cut them to dry?

[Tirza]

Here are some things that will help with outdoor drying:
http://cgi.ebay.ca/non-electric-FOOD-DEHYDRATOR-seed-sprouter-and-more_W0QQitemZ230003101107QQihZ013QQcategoryZ13464 5QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

And consider those little picnic covers kind of like little net tents:
http://cgi.ebay.ca/non-electric-FOOD-DEHYDRATOR-seed-sprouter-and-more_W0QQitemZ230003101107QQihZ013QQcategoryZ13464 5QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.ca/POP-UP-FOOD-COVER-Folds-FLAT-for-Storage-BBQ-PICNIC_W0QQitemZ300003454793QQihZ020QQcategoryZ207 25QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem#ebayphotohosting

[luvmyfruit]

Lifeagift, I'm very interested to hear how they turn out, I too am a former PC consultant and the products you mentioned are my faves as well...although I haven't been able to use my stone for anything in a long time.
Loved the tomatoes in the dehydrator though

[spicyfull]

My Grandmother lived in Tennessee and the Sun was the only dehydrator she had. She dried all of her fruit and tomatoes. This was in the 50s she would put them on a screen and cover them with cheese cloth.
I live in Calif. and I take advantage of our Sun whenever possible. I take my Kountry Kitchen Dehydrator shelves outside, use one as the bottom and place one on the top. If they are not totally dry I bring them at night. I have no problem with flies, they only like nasty stuff. This is the way I dry my cracker all summer.
I love to RECYCLE ANYTIME,,ANYWHERE...............

[Conscious Midwife]

Went to two stores couldn't find chees cloth.

Darn

Will experiment anyway, with just a few slices maybe 1/8 inch. We are not expecting rain tommorow so this should be great. Not worried about the bugs. Surely flies don't leave there eggs on hot tomatoes. Who knows.

Last year the birds did get to my strawberry boxes though.

My guess is that the tomatoes surely won't get any hotter than they would growing, just dry. may be a poor rationale, but I won't be home to check the hottest temp. The stone being continually outdoor temp plus the sun would probably genrate a temp 5-10degrees hotter than the heat index. Just my non scientific guess. We'll see.

If it works then I'm off to make cracker in a pinch.

I may even purchase some window screen material from lowes and invent my own contraption temporarily.

I have a huge deck and gazebo. My deck get's full sun from about 10a until sunset. It's always blazing hot out there. So we'll see.


I'll keep you folks posted.

[spicyfull]

Try looking at a Fabric store. If not cheese cloth try Tulle, the fabric wedding veils are made from.
But using screen material, plastic should do better, encased in wood (imagine a picture frame and marry one on top of the other) should work. Anyway I do know that things will dry. You know they need to be turned. I use teflon bakeware liners to lay my mixtures on.........

[juliebove]

When I was a kid, we found all sorts of creative uses for window screens. My dad somehow got a ton of them for free and hooked them together to make a play house out of them. He gave some to a neighbor whose grandpa had a fruit orchard. We used them to make raisins. This was in Wichita where it got very hot in the summer. It was also quite windy. We washed the screens well, placed them on wooden sawhorses to elevate them, then put the grapes on top, adding another sceen on top of that to help keep the bugs out. I can't remember the particulars but something was put in between the screens so we didn't smash the grapes. Most likely it was a nail or something at the corners. I believe they had wooden frames. The top screen was weighted down at the corners with clean rocks to keep it from flying away. It usually only took a day or two to get raisins.

I just looked it up and found this:

http://homecooking.about.com/od/howtocookvegetables/a/sundriedrecipe.htm

So apparently you can use a similar method to make sun dried tomatoes.

[Conscious Midwife]

Ok so it's raining

Surely it will stop before I leave for work.

I really thought this would be a one day process, but the various website seem to state longer, at for 1/2 and whole tomatoes. Sticking to my 1/8 in slices. NO PATIENCE YA KNOW!!! :p

[scott]

I live in Atlanta metro Ga. and I have an an Excalibur, but a few months ago I thought on these really hot sunny days, why should I waste electricity and heat up the the pantry area where I have my dehydrator - so I just sun dry everything. I do it very simply. I use both the trays and if necessary also the teflex sheets from the Excalibur and just place out in the sun. Don't care about the flying bugs, maybe I'll get a little B12 - I put things up on a ladder to keep the ants away from the food. I've been doing this all summer - starts in April here. I've sun dried marinated mushrooms, zucchini pastas, tomatoes, coconut, bananas, etc.
It works great and I know I'm saving a bit of electricity for all of us. Good deal! Easy as can be. Don't overthink this thing. As far as worrying about the temperature, do you worry about the temperatures of the produce growing on the fields at the (hopefully organic) farms - so what's the difference.

Scott

[rawpriestess]

sun drying has been around forever, just know that when the tomaotes are growing, they can get very hot and NOT lose enzymes, because the plant is still growing, and on the vine the tomatoes don't cook or get dry, so that theory of them not getting too hot doesn't wash, as they are still drawing moisture from the soil and air,


once they are picked, and they no longer have their umbilical cord to the ground and their food and moisture source, they proceed to deteriorate, hense, pick one off the vine, lay it next to one on the vine, and see what happens.

so, please do not think that you can keep the enzymes in the food even if it gets super hot, in the sun, this won't work unless it is still growing and can get it's own moisture.

but I do sun dry, although our days are normally only about 70 to 85, mostly, if it got much hotter, I wouldn't live here anymore, YIKES!!

[GreenPrince]

rawpriestess,

I quote this from my post in another thread on this board:

For fun I did an experiment and measured the temperature of some fruits of the kind often dried in the sun.

I opened a 1 lb package of SunMaid raisin, and put a handfull on a plate beside some fresh dates and a tomato. Then I let the plate be in the sunshine in a windprotected terrace for an hour.
The temperature was measured with an IR-thermometer without physical contact with the fruits.

Background parameters:
Air temperature: 84 F (29 C)
Air humidity: 32%
Sun angle above the horizont: 48 degrees.
Sky: blue with slightly haze.

RESULTS and DISCUSSION
Raisins, dates and tomato: 120 F (49 C). I then changed the angle of the plate to the sun to imitate a hot zenith sun. The temperature raised to 134 F (57 C). This means that the raisin temperature in the sunshine was: 36 F (20 C) above the air temperature, and 50 F (28 C) for the zenith case.

A was a little astonished, because I never want to raise the food temperature in a dehydrator above the highest (fever) temperature we human being can get.

The reason why we and the vegetation don't get to hot in the sunshine is an effective cooling system; water evaporation needs warmth and the temperature decreases. I think it would be of interest, if somebody measured the temperature with a food thermometer inside a fruit still on the tree in the sunshine.

[Conscious Midwife]

So my sun dried tomato experiment has been put off unitl tommorow.

It rained hard all day Wednesday
Was super Humid thursday

Then the "maters were all gone , So now I gotta shop again , this time I'll find cheese cloth too.

[Sharon in Colorado]

Green Prince I have to wonder if the plate you used raised the temperature more than it normally would, say on a tarp or directly on the ground. Stones and ceramic can retain a higher amount of heat I would think.

Oh, and I agree about the cooling system. When we don't keep our plants moist of course they start withering and drying out.

[GreenPrince]

I see your point, Sharon.
My choice was a white, porcelain plate, because it would reflect the sunheat as much as possible.

However, I will repeat this experiment in the end of next week I hope and measure the temperature under these conditions:
1. One white plate, partly covered by raisins (as previous).
2. One white plate completely covered by raisins.
3. One white plate without raisins.

[Smiley24_7]

How would sun drying work in climates in which the temperature tend to exceed 115 degrees?

[rawpriestess]

I often put my food on a plate in my dehydrator, and the plate comes out, sometimes hot to the touch, YIKES!!


so I started measuring the temp of the food, and the inside and the outside of the food was under 95, where the plate was as high as 120, the dehydrator was set on 120.

HUMMMMM, so I will continue to check my foods this way, which always seem to be way below the dehydrator temp.

[GreenPrince]

The water evaporation from the food reduces the food temperature. The same happens in a sauna. The air temperature may exceed the boiling temperature of water. Provided a dry air you will enjoy your bath, still uncocked.

I think Excalibur discusses this somewhere.

[Linda1970]

Do you guys think that a fan facing the food will be necessary, or do you think the wind is good enough?

[Linda1970]

Here are some things that will help with outdoor drying:
http://cgi.ebay.ca/non-electric-FOOD-DEHYDRATOR-seed-sprouter-and-more_W0QQitemZ230003101107QQihZ013QQcategoryZ13464 5QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

And consider those little picnic covers kind of like little net tents:
http://cgi.ebay.ca/non-electric-FOOD-DEHYDRATOR-seed-sprouter-and-more_W0QQitemZ230003101107QQihZ013QQcategoryZ13464 5QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.ca/POP-UP-FOOD-COVER-Folds-FLAT-for-Storage-BBQ-PICNIC_W0QQitemZ300003454793QQihZ020QQcategoryZ207 25QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem#ebayphotohosting

Doubleg or anyone else, have you tried this dehydrator/sprouter? It looks really great & I think I want to get it.

[Linda1970]

Do you guys think this would work? http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000C8ET2K/104-4734676-0146305?v=glance&n=3375251


Thanks