I enjoy cooking down tomatoes from our backyard garden and turning them eventually into pasta sauce. It’s a long process but worth it as nothing compares to homemade vs. store bought. With that said, it’s important that you remove the skins from the tomatoes before you start cooking them down.
You can check out my Seasoned Tomato Sauce Recipe and home canning instructions by checking out my previous post with step-by-step instructions and photos.
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I wash all tomatoes in my kitchen sink. You want to make sure they’re clean before going any further.
Core each tomato using a paring knife on your cutting board. Discard the core and stem. I then cut an X-shape into the tomato. Rinse it under a light stream of water from the kitchen sink which helps to remove seeds. Place tomato in a bowl and continue until you have all of them done.
Bring a large pot of water to a boil on the stove-top. I like to add 1 teaspoon of salt to the water. Place the tomatoes into the water. Boil for 3-4 minutes or until you see the skins starting to crack and wrinkle. Turn off the heat. I use a ladel to get them out of the water placing them into a strainer in my clean kitchen sink. I run cold water over them to cool them down. Don’t skip this part because you need to stop the cooking process by immediately cooling them down.
Once they’re cool enough to handle…place them onto your cutting board and peel the skins off. The skins should come off easily. You can toss the skins into your compost bin or you can place them into a food dehydrator to dry them out. Why dry them out? Once dry you can place the dried skins into a blender and blenderize them to turn them into tomato powder. That powder can be added to recipes, smoothies, cocktail drinks, soups & stews, etc. to add additional flavor.
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