Uses for Tomato Skins/Seeds from Food Processing?

When I process my tomatoes for sauce, I put them through a series of plates on my food mill to remove the skins and seeds from my final product.

Usually, I will chuck this material into my compost and call it a day but maybe I am missing out on something?

Any ideas for better use of this material?

Thank you in advance.

I don't mill that stuff out of my tomatoes, I just leave it in the sauce and eat it -- so I don't have any firsthand suggestions, but it popped into my head that you could put it on a dehydrator rack and make crackers out of that waste.

After dehydrating the skins/seeds grind them into a powder to add flavor to other foods.

Just to post the obvious... feed them to your chickens!

Sure, using them for Human food may be a higher calling, but the happy chickens lay happy eggs!

While we own a mill to separate the seeds, it has been decades since we have used it. When canning tomatoes skins and seeds go into the jars.  We couldn’t figure out why we were not using all the tomato that we could….and working so hard at it. That said,if I was to peal the tomatoes, I like Anne’s idea to dehydrate and turn to powder.

For the last few years, I've been fermenting off all the tomato guts and saving the seed.  In the spring, I make up little seed packets and give them to the local food bank.  I do between 150-300, depending on the year, and they all end up going to either the food aid recipients or the volunteers.  They usually get over 200 families for every hand-out, so even if only 1% of the people who get seeds plant them, that's still two households that are one very tiny step closer to food security.

We give the skins/seeds discard to chickens or just throwing in the compost.

This being said, we do save what we call “tomato water”.

We start by putting tomatoes in big trays, cut up if they’re big, whole if they’re smaller, broil them in the oven till the tops start to blacken a little ( then change trays, the bottom one gets on top).

This breaks the skins and also leaves a lot of water in the trays, which I collect before running the actual tomatoes through a food mill.

I freeze most of this tomato water and use it in minestrone type soups. It gives the soup a very good taste.

Maybe it’s worth saying that I make sauce from all the tomatoes I’m growing, and paste tomatoes is a very small amount most years.

Yes, my tomato sauce is thinner than store bought sauce, even after cooking it down some. And we’re ok with that.☺️

Timothy Norton wrote:When I process my tomatoes for sauce, I put them through a series of plates on my food mill to remove the skins and seeds from my final product.

Usually, I will chuck this material into my compost and call it a day but maybe I am missing out on something?

Any ideas for better use of this material?

Thank you in advance.

Curious as to why do you need to run it through seversl plates to remove skins and seeds?

Liv Smith wrote: Curious as to why do you need to run it through seversl plates to remove skins and seeds?

I found that if I run it through the medium plate then the fine plate I can process a batch without overwhelming the mill.

I could very well be using it wrong, I'm kinda winging things in the kitchen at times.

Timothy Norton wrote:

I'm kinda winging things in the kitchen at times.

Aren’t we all😁. Well, maybe some of us. I know there is a lot of winging it at my place. Both in the garden and in the kitchen.

I’m not sure which plate I’m using, maybe the smallest. It does gum up after a while, but by that time the pot I cook the sauce in it’s full and I’m ready to so something else, or take a break and come here on permies to pester people😁. Which is exactly what I’m doing now, while waiting for the sauce to cook down.

So... It seems I responded to the wrong thread... Here ya go.

I think a Permie dehydrates the skin and seass for later use as tomato paste. Could not find the post. Here's how rural sprout did it.

https://www.ruralsprout.com/make-tomato-paste-from-tomato-skins/

Liv Smith wrote:

Timothy Norton wrote:

I'm kinda winging things in the kitchen at times.

Aren’t we all😁. Well, maybe some of us. I know there is a lot of winging it at my place. Both in the garden and in the kitchen.

I’m not sure which plate I’m using, maybe the smallest. It does gum up after a while, but by that time the pot I cook the sauce in it’s full and I’m ready to so something else, or take a break and come here on permies to pester people😁. Which is exactly what I’m doing now, while waiting for the sauce to cook down.

Handy tip: cook first, then process through the mill, if you want the most out of your tomatoes, AND the easiest, non-gummiest milling. Yup. If you want to save the seeds, you can do that when you cut them up, to cook. The cooking very effectively separates the skin, so that the mill doesn't have to work so hard. But, the mill works better than simply using a sieve or chinois because the skins are moved away, and can't clog the holes in the screen. I don't separate them for all of it - only what I may be serving to those who can't have the seeds or added fiber of the skins. We have 2 married-into-the-family folks who have diverticulosis, that can very easily become a much more painful acute diverticulitis, if they aren't careful about seeds & too much fiber.

Carla Burke wrote:
Handy tip: cook first, then process through the mill, if you want the most out of your tomatoes, AND the easiest, non-gummiest milling.  

This is what I do, when I get access to lots of cheap tomatoes: and it was one of my permies colleagues here who taught me.
Wash the tomatoes and cut into pieces that are sized to go into your mill (I use an omega juicer, so they need to be cut at least into halves).
Throw in the crockpot for a few hours (could be 2 on high, 6 on low, whatever)
During cooking, whenever possible ladle out the "tomato water" described above. My kid drinks it, but it's a great cooking ingredient.

When they're cooked, mill up (to remove the seeds/skins and sort out the texture) and voilá, there's your passata. Can be canned, frozen, or whatever.

I found that the rabbits like eating the seeds/skins (who would have guessed). I could also see blending it up and throwing it into pancakes or bread or something- there's plenty of fiber and flavor.

Why separate the seeds and skins at all?  I discovered the easy way to tomato sauce, at least, is to first dry the first few harvests, and then store these until the main crop comes in.  With the big harvest I just throw them in the blender whole and puree them, first having cut out the core if there is one and any bad spots.  As this is beginning to simmer in the big pot, I take some of the dried ones and powder these in the same blender, and then stir this into the sauce until it's the right thickness.  Then add spices, bring to a boil, and can away!  A huge sauce project now fits easily into one day since there is no hours and hours boiling it down, stirring the while to keep it from scorching.  And I've replace a bunch of propane with solar energy.

When it comes to my tomato sauce, I usually leave it all in.  Though, I have relatives who really don't like this and I supply quite a few people with seed and skin free sauce batches as well as make some tomato juice and catsup (my recipe is definitely a catsup and not ketchup).  So I end up with a lot of seeds and skins.  My favorite use of them, especially the skins, is to dehydrate all of them (solar dehydrator is helpful) and then I grind it into a powder.  This powder I keep in a spice shaker and I use it to add a little color/fiber/thickener in different dishes similar to how someone might use paprika.  The rest gets mixed in with my "edible garden scraps" who all get a similar treatment and ground finely in a spice grinder or food processor with dried onion, mushroom, carrot, potato, lovage, or other similar garden vegetables all included.  Careful not to overpower the blend with one flavor (lovage can take over).  This powder is my go-to thickener for gravies, soups, even some dips and dressings.  It can also add flavor depth in some cooking and I'll add it to meatballs, bread dough, meatloaf, breading, tomato sauce and alfredo, and more.  I feel good about the fact that I'm incorporating the high nutrient/fiber/antioxidant trimmings and bits back into our diet in different ways and it has become pretty useful without changing what we eat in any meaningful way.

Alder Burns wrote:Why separate the seeds and skins at all?  I discovered the easy way to tomato sauce, at least, is to first dry the first few harvests, and then store these until the main crop comes in.  With the big harvest I just throw them in the blender whole and puree them, first having cut out the core if there is one and any bad spots.  As this is beginning to simmer in the big pot, I take some of the dried ones and powder these in the same blender, and then stir this into the sauce until it's the right thickness.  Then add spices, bring to a boil, and can away!  A huge sauce project now fits easily into one day since there is no hours and hours boiling it down, stirring the while to keep it from scorching.  And I've replace a bunch of propane with solar energy.

I’ve made sauce both ways, and I grew San Marzano tomatoes to make the sauce the first time I pealed and seeded them. I found that the pealed and seeded sauce was so much better in taste than anything I had before. And there was a difference between the seeded and deseeded San Marzano sauces. I did not have a mill then so it was way too much work, but the taste was better.
Maybe the difference wouldn’t be that great with another variety, but now that I have a mill…