How to Make Dried Candied Tomatoes

Tomato is an annual Solanaceae herb. The color of the tomato is bright, the meat is delicious and the nutrition is rich. So there are many kinds of tomato products. The traditional tomato products mainly include tomato sauce, canned whole tomato and tomato juice, etc. But with the development of science and technology, many new tomato products have been developed, such as dried candied tomatoes. For this, how to make dried candied tomatoes in FPL?

How to dispose of tomatoes before candying?

There are five steps for candied tomatoes preparation. The detailed information is as follow:

Material selection

You need to choose tomatoes that are thicker, less juicy, completely red in color and not overripe. Then remove unqualified fruits that are not mature enough, damaged by diseases and insect pests, or damaged.

Peeling red skin

In the second step, you can pre-cook the washed tomato fruits in nearly boiling water for about 1 minute. Then immediately cool them and peel off the tomatoes’ skin.

Squeezing the juice

After peeling you can squeeze the juice. Dig and slit the fruit stem and gently squeeze out the juice. And you can use either manual or machine methods.

Hardening tomatoes

You need to immerse tomatoes in a 0.30% calcium chloride solution for 2 hours. In order to maintain the color of the final dried candied tomatoes and ensure a crisp and hard texture.

Cleaning fruit embryo

After that, you must wash the fruit embryo with water, remove the fruit embryo and drain the water.

What is the process of making dried candied tomatoes?

Candying tomatoes

Tomato fruit embryos after draining water can soak in 30% sugar solution for about 24 hours. And sugar solution need plus 0.30% citric acid. This step is necessary in dried candied tomatoes production.

Brewing candied tomatoes

Then you can pour the candied tomatoes together with the immersion liquid into the jacketed kettle, and slowly heat up to boiling. After about half an hour, you need to soak the tomato juice with boiled sugar solution in a porcelain jar for 12-24 hours. Soak it twice or three times is the best choice for you. Because it can increase the concentration of the sugar solution each time. Then when the concentration of the boiled sugar solution reaches 65%, it will cease to fire. After pouring into the porcelain tank for 8-10 hours, remove tomato fruits and drain the sugar liquid.

Drying the final product

Finally, you can put the tomato fruit in the sugar liquid into the material tray, insert the material tray into the material cart. And each tray interval is 10 cm, dry temperature at 60℃-65℃ and set the drying time to 15-20 hours. This continuous dehumidification lead to the water content reaching about 18%, soluble solid content reaching 70%.