Homemade Tomato Paste

Tomato Paste is a very useful ingredient in many dishes and recipes. For many years throughout history this was typically made through a pain staking process of sun drying tomatoes on wooden boards over the period of days. This receipt is a modern take on the the traditional method that can produce good thick paste in a matter of hours. 5-6 depending on how big of a batch you want to do. This also can be used as a substitute for any type of canned or store bought paste required for other receipts.

Step 1: Prepare and Juice Fresh Tomatoes

Choose which tomatoes you would like to use. Ideally use a sauce tomato which will produce more pulp/thick juice that will boil down easier due to less water. However any tomato will do. We use fresh tomatoes from our garden, as we know they are organic and pesticide free.

Wash all of the tomatoes and pull off the stems. We use the juicer on a kitchen-aid to juice our tomatoes. There is no need to peel them when using this juicer, however they need sliced in order to fit into the juicer.

Juice the tomatoes and pour the juice into a large stock pot to boil.

Step 2: Boil the Juice Down to a Sauce Like Consistency

Once all the tomatoes are juiced bring the mixture to a boil and stir as often as necessary to keep the juice from burning. It is important to scrap the bottom of the pan to ensure no pulp is sticking to the bottom and burning. Should any of the material burn the whole batch will be lost. In this step boil the juice until it has a thick sauce like consistency, the thicker you can get it in this step the better, however the risk of burning becomes higher the thicker it gets. Use a rubber spatula to scrape the edges of the pot.

As the mixture gets thicker stirring will need to occur more often.

The step can take anywhere from 2 to 5 hours depending on how much you are making.

Step 3: Bake the Paste

Move the thick sauce to a baking sheet or multiple bake sheets, and place in the oven at 450 degrees F.

Make sure the spread stays even on the baking sheet. Carefully take out of the oven (steam likes to escape when opening the oven) and mix every 20 minutes. Re-spread evenly across the pan. Continue to bake.

Continue this process until the paste has reached the desired thickness you want. At his point either use in your required recipe or place in jars and follow the standard canning practice for sauce.

Enjoy!

Comments

[Pirate_Prince]

Interesting way to make a tomato paste/puree.
I guess, the industrial process is very similar to this.
Unfortunately not energy efficient as you need to use lots of electricity.
The traditional method and I would also add, wholesome method, is to place the chopped up tomatos and juice in a clean cotton sack (You can also use unwanted Clean bed sheet to make a sack). Placing a container underneath,(You may need 2 people for this depending on the size of your sack) tie up the sack and hang it with a strong rope (ideally) to a suitable tree branch receiving plenty of sunshine.(can also be done indoors like in a coservatory) As it hangs in the sun the juices will drain, a lot at the beggining and very slowly after a day or two. It will be ready to take down when there is no more dripping. That is how my parents used to make it. :)

[fastrunner08]

I have tried that before as my grandparents used to do that in Italy. Unfortunately, that process doesn't work very well in my area of ohio. Due to rain, humility, lack of sunshine, and pests it often rots, or gets ruined very quickly. I never get a usable paste. I measured the energy required last time I ran a batch. It was about 15 kilowatts beyond my normal daily usage. Roughly about $1.50 in energy. This is using an electric oven and stove.