A few months ago I got the chance to buy a ZCorp 3d printer to pursue my quest of 3d printing as many food types as I can. Long story short this printer uses powder as a material. Thus the reason for me to learn how to make food powder.

My first adventure has been using a dehydrator for fruits and vegetables.

Its fairly straight forward, but each ingredient require different temperatures and times. But for now lets focus on Tomato powder!!!

By the way my tomato powder experiments are part of my Science Sandbox Fellowship experiments, do check it out if you are in New York and looking for a great community :)

Enough words and more making. For this you are gonna need.

A tomato
A knife
A dehydrator
A coffee/spicies grinder

Let's cook it!

Step 1: Slicing

First step is to slice the tomatoes. As obvious and simple as it sounds this is an important process. Why??? because the thickness of the slices will have a big impact on how long it takes to "dry". So be careful and take the extra time to slice extra thin slices.

After that lay them on your dehydrator tray as close to each other as possible but avoiding overlapping. Overlapping will create areas that are harder to dry, so it will take longer.

Step 2: Dehydrate

This is the easy step. Slide the tray into the dehydrator set the temperature to vegetables or 52*C. And time to wait.

But... for how long? this will totally depend on the amount of tomatoes, how thin they are and the type of tomato too!!

But a couple of hours should be enough to start having "crispy" slices. Once you get there you are set for the next step.

Step 3: Grinding

We are almost there, last step!

Put the dried slices into your coffee grinder and grind them all!!!

It grinds easily and fast. After that bring your powder into a sealed container and you are ready to go. This powder absorbs a loooooot of humidity compare to others like carrot or banana. Just make sure to clean your grinder properly otherwise it will get super sticky!!

And this is it, how to make tomato powder in 3 easy steps :)