At the moment we have a glut of tomatoes coming on (I grew all those plants from seed [here]. I ended up putting 40 plants into my garden before flogging the rest off to friends and family.) I have lots of different varieties of tomato but for the most part, I treat them all the same. When I get too many I have been preserving them in jars and yesterday I tried something new, making tomato paste.
After removing skins and pips I ended up with approx 6oz of pureed tomato and from that I've ended up with 2oz! Yes, that isn't much comparatively to what I started with but the end product is this amazingly rich, condensed tomato paste. It's awesome and I'll do it again now that I know that it turns out so splendidly.
The recipe:
10oz Tomatoes
1/4 Cup Himalayan salt (you can reduce this amount if you don't like it too salty)
1/2 Tsp Citric acid
1 - Remove pips from tomatoes and stew them in a large pot for approx half an hour until soft
2 - Push the tomatoes through a sieve or mule to remove skins and any other missed pips
3 - Return pulp to pot and simmer tomatoes until it leaves you with 4-5 cups of thick pulp
4 - Spread the tomato pulp on two trays and turn your oven onto 100 degrees celcious.
5 - Roast the puree for approx 4-6 hours, stirring occasionally so it doesn't burn until the puree turns into thick paste. About half way though the pulp will have reduced enough that you can transfer it all onto one tray and continue to roast until it is ready.
6 - Store it in jars in the fridge (shelf life up to a month), seal it in fowlers jars/similar a water bath (shelf life up to 12 months) or freeze (shelf life up to 12 months).
So simple but it does take a bit of time before you get the end product. It's worth it though, I'm incredibly in love with my rich paste. Next time I'm going to add some herbs too for a little bit of variety. Why not eh!
First meal with the paste...pizza!
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