Green Tomato Vanilla Leather
End-of-season green tomatoes cooked down with lemon and vanilla, then dried into strips you can eat with one hand.
- calories
- 150
- weight
- 1.3 oz
- cal / oz
- 115
- protein
- 1 g
- serves
- 8, scales
- prep
- 30 min
- cook
- 0 min
- total time
- 30 min
- water
- none
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Snack
- Dessert
- No cook
- Backpacking
- Thru-hike
- Day hike
- Bikepacking
- Canoe / raft
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
- Gluten free
- Dairy free
- Nut free
- Eat in the bag
- Dehydrate ahead
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Green tomatoes | 2 lb | hard, unripe, no soft spots |
|---|---|---|
| Sugar | 2 cups | cuts to 1 1/2 cups if you want it tarter |
| Lemon | 1 | juice and zest |
| Vanilla bean | 1 | split, or 2 tsp extract |
| Salt | 1/4 tsp |
Method
- At home: quarter the tomatoes, seed the wettest ones, and slice them thin. Toss with the sugar, lemon juice, zest, salt, and the scraped vanilla bean. Let it sit two hours until the sugar pulls out liquid.
- Simmer the whole thing uncovered, stirring often, until the syrup sheets off a spoon and the fruit has gone translucent. Forty minutes, give or take. Pull the vanilla pod.
- Blend or mash it smooth, then spread it 1/8 inch thick on lined dehydrator trays or a parchment sheet.
- Dry at 135°F for 6 to 8 hours, until it is tacky but no longer wet in the center. An oven on its lowest setting with the door cracked works.
- Cut into strips and roll each one in parchment.
- In camp: unroll and eat. No stove, no water, no pot.
Green tomatoes are mostly pectin and acid, which is why they set into jam so willingly and why that jam dries into a leather that does not crack. The vanilla and lemon are doing structural work, not decoration: the bean rounds off the raw, grassy edge unripe tomatoes carry, and the acid keeps the sugar from tasting flat.
A jar of jam is dead weight on a trail and needs a spoon and a lid you will lose. Drying it removes about three quarters of the water and turns a preserve into a pocket food. The trade is time at home, not time at camp. Dry it until it stops being sticky in the middle or it will mold on a long carry.
Packing
Rolled strips go in one zip bag with the parchment still on. Without the paper they weld into a single brick by day three. Keep them out of the top of the pack where the sun cooks them soft.
Variations
- A split dried chile in the simmer gives it a slow burn behind the vanilla.
- Swap half the green tomatoes for tart apple if your tomatoes are too seedy to spread well.
- Stop before the dehydrator and jar the jam instead for car camping, where a cooler and a spoon are not a problem.
https://savoriurbane.com/dulceata-de-gogonele-cu-vanilie-si-lamaie