What's funny is that they have less wet gel inside but produce more tomato product. These are great for sauces and such. I tried juicing beefsteak one year but once you cook the volume down the ratio of fruit weight to sauce is pitiful.
That "unfinished" tomato sauce in the pot there looks like "finished" tomato sauce that has been cooked down. Great work, and there I went shitting on the poor San Marzano.
Oops, I posted in the homestead thread before. These fruits were so ready to ripen but it was just not the right temp. These were pulled green on Wed and are almost totally colored now. I have a ton of tomatoes turning too.
Just an exceptional and fortunate fall and winter year here for all of the brassicas. I'm pulling basketball-sized cabbages out now that you could dribble, but not palm.
What do you guys do with all your leftover herbs at the end of the season? We're finally getting consistently cold weather here, so I've moved all my stuff into the garage until I can figure out something to do with it. I plan on using a lot of the rosemary, thyme, and oregano as part of the brines I'm making for the 11 turkeys I have to make next week, but even after that I'll still have a lot left over. Assuming the easiest thing to do is to dehydrate and just jar the dried stuff?
I have an indoor grow up that I keep growing the core ones in to use them over the winter. Outside of that, I have a big dehydrator that I use to dry them, and then store them in glass mason jars with a desiccant pack for later use.
I pureed my basil in the food processor with oil and froze in ice cube trays. Mostly Thai basil for some specific recipes.
I have to drag my dehydrator out of the basement I guess. You recall what time/temp you run yours at? Ooh, that's a great idea. I have a ton of leftover sweet basil that I have no idea what to do with. I can use these for pesto bases.
It depends on what I'm doing... it's a commercial dehydrator so has pretty solid controls around temp and time. https://www.cabelas.ca/product/94810/cabelas-80-litre-commercial-grade-food-dehydrator
Herbs and mushrooms should be dried as low as possible, like 95F or so. I have a cosori dehydrator that is awesome, sale price was $114. It's a good machine and I use it a lot. I passed on trying one of those round stacking style machines. They are cheaper but generally inferior in about every way to the box style ones.
I’m a slacker, I just cut it and dry it at room temperature. I think I have four rosemary plants now, that I brought indoors and have under the grow light. I don’t know why I keep a couple of them going, other than they haven’t died on me. So I let them keep going.
Wrong. Ive had my Nesco silo stacker style for like 15 years and it has worked perfect every time. Actually keeps good temps for as cheap as it is. More modular for storage and cleaning. If I had the space and did bigger volume dehydrating Id go with a box style but Ive been entirely happy with mine.
I'm glad you like yours, but I've read a lot of people who used them a lot ended up moving to the box style and being much happier with the volume and precision it offered. I don't have experience with the stacker units but didn't want to fiddle, so I jumped in on something I thought I'd use a lot. I think the boxes are easier to monitor and make changes through the dehydration as well.
I used to have a stackable that I inherited from my parents. There's a reason I never saw it in action... first time I tried to use it it turned everything moldy and it just didn't work worth shit. Threw it out after trying it for a week. I'm sure they're not all like that, but after spending so much time and effort to grow the stuff, I wanted to be sure that I could harvest and store/use everything as a result, so I bought a better dehydrator.