Drying Process of Tomato

Tomato is an annual solanaceae herb. Tomato color is bright, it is sweet with sour, the tomato meat is delicious, and thin juicy skin with rich nutrition. China is a tomato planting country, the output is next to the United States, the world's second. There are many kinds of tomato products. The traditional tomato products mainly include tomato sauce, canned whole tomato, tomato sauce, tomato juice, tomato beverage, tomato preserves and tomato jelly. With the development of science and technology, many new tomato products have been developed, such as lycopene, tomato dietary fiber, tomato seed protein and tomato seed oil and so on. 

Process steps of tomato processing：

Material selection - peeling - squeezing - hardening - cleaning - sugaring - sugar boiling - drying - finished products

1. Material selection: select the fruit with less thick juice, red color, but ripe, and remove the fruit with insufficient maturity, diseases and insect pests, damage and rot.

2. Peeling. Place the washed tomatoes in boiling water and cook for about 1 minute. Cool immediately. Peel the tomatoes.

3. Squeezing: preheat the tomatoes in nearly boiling water for 1min, cool immediately, peel. Dig the stalk and slit it. Squeeze the juice gently.

4. Hardening: soak the billet in 0.30% calcium chloride solution for 2 hours.

5. Cleaning: harden fruit embryo with clean water, remove fruit embryo, drain water.

6. Sugaring: the tomato fruit embryo after draining water, soak in 30% sugar solution for about 24 hours, sugar solution plus 0.30% citric acid.

7. Sugar boiling: pour the tomato with sugar into the interlayer pot, slowly heat up to boil, about half an hour later, the tomato juice with cooking sugar immersed in the porcelain pot for 12 -- 24 hours. This repeated immersion 2-3 times, each time to increase the concentration of sugar solution. When the concentration of boiled sugar solution reached 65%, namely cease fire, pour into the porcelain jar 8-10 hours later, remove the tomato and fruit drain sugar solution.

8. Drying: drain the tomato and fruit of the sugar solution, put them into the material tray, insert the material tray into the material cart, each tray is 10 cm apart, and then dry them at 60℃ -- 65℃. The drying time is set at 15-20 hours, so that the water content reaches about 18% and the soluble solid content reaches 70%.

Quality requirements：

Colour and lustre is dark red, show transparent shape, do not return arenaceous, do not flow candy, sweet acid is appropriate, have the flavour of tomato fruit, contain sugar content above 65%, moisture 18% or so.