Black color on my dehydrated tomatoes

[Xanadu]

Does this mean they are bad? They are all equally sliced thin in my mandoline and all equally dehydrated at about 110 degrees or less according to a nice digital thermometer I put into the excalibur as I don't trust it's dial on top. The slices were taken directly from the warm dehydrator and put into heavy zip lock bags and were all beautiful and red. Most of them are still red but several have black spots or areas and a few slices are mostly black. This has occurred over about a month in my pantry. Are they safe to eat? I went through and broke off the black areas I could and discarded whole slices that I couldn't do that with but I am still not sure about them. I dehydrated them for about three days or longer. They were nice and dry.

[walnutty]

The slices were taken directly from the warm dehydrator and put into heavy zip lock bags and were all beautiful and red.

It is possibly because they went right from the warm dehydrator into zip lock bags. I always leave my dehydrated items in the EX for a few hours to cool completely, otherwise they give off moisture while they cool and can spoil or mold. I don't know if that is what happened to your tomatoes or not, but if they have gotten black over time I suspect that it is a mold of some kind.

Hopefully, someone with knowledge specific to the "black" will post. I have not had that happen yet.

[Xanadu]

I am hoping someone will reply who knows for sure but the black doesn't look like mold. It looks like color through and through, no fuzziness at all. My husband just went and got some and proceeded to eat the black ones and says they taste fine. No point in telling him not to - he wouldn't listen. I was worried if I let them cool that they would attract moisture from the air as we live in humid Tennessee. By the way, I appreciate your answer and I am going to try it your way next time although it is now winter and with heating the house I don't know if it will give me a real answer as to what went wrong.

[Xanadu]

Does anybody really know what is going on here? Are they safe to eat? Thanks!

[juliebove]

I don't know, but... The book that comes with my dehydrator and all the books I bought about dehydrating food says that the dehydrated food must be stored in the refrigerator afterwards. Perhaps this is the reason they went black?

[Xanadu]

Been away on a trip so I didn't answer you right away Juliebove but I never heard of refrigerating dehydrated items...they don't refrigerate the raw dehydrated iitems I buy online. :confused: Oh well maybe someone who knows for sure will answer me eventually. Thanks for the info anyway. : )

[Lady Green Jeans]

Good question. Your husband did not get ill or suffer any adverse effects after eating the darkened tomatoes? Could be they just darkened. I used to leave my sundried tomatoes from the HFS on top the fridge in their little plastic container. If not used within a month or two, they all darkened to a dark brownish color. Honestly was not appetizing looking even though I tasted them and the flavor was fine. After pitching a couple batches (not a cheap thing to do), I now store mine in the fridge double wrapped or in a plastic airtight container to preserve flavor and color.

Hope this is helpful even if it may not totally answer your question.

Kathy

[VeggieMel]

Oh gosh, that topic was addressed one time in a raw food preparation class I had. Now I can't remember why the tomatoes were black, but I do remember they were fine to eat.