- Author: Ann King Filmer
Published on: April 27, 2010
Home cooks know the secret to peeling tomatoes is a quick dip in hot water to loosen the skins. It takes a lot of water (and heating energy) to peel three million pounds of processing tomatoes in California each year. New UC Davis research is fine-tuning a novel way of peeling all those tomatoes with almost no water — using infrared heat.
Two methods are used to remove skins in processed tomatoes — a hot water/lye dip, or steam. The dip method uses a lot of water, a lot of energy, and creates a lot of salts . . . which presents its own disposal problem. Steam treatment heats too much of the tomato, resulting in reduced yield and quality.
“The...
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