This morning, for instance, I processed about 20 pounds of tomatoes for tomato paste. I've never made my own tomato paste before, and since a) my tomatoes are still producing like gangbusters and b) I've already canned the amount, plus a little extra, of regular tomatoes I will need for the coming food year, I decided to take a stab at making my own paste.
Out of 20 pounds of tomatoes, blanched, skinned, de-seeded, stemmed, and strained well, this is what I ended up with. By the way, I left the Mason jar with kitchen compost in the frame so you can get the general size of the bowl.
It was about 3 hours of hard work, for one half bowl of paste. And this isn't even the end of the processing. Tomorrow, I will need to cook this down, reducing it even more, before it can really be called paste. And then it will need to be canned in a water-bath canner.
So regarding whether it's easier and/or more financially worthwhile to make it vs. buy it, I am guessing it's probably easier and more cost-effective to buy small cans of organic tomato paste at the supermarket, and use all your tomatoes for canning. After all, regular, old home-preserved tomatoes are great for making spaghetti sauce, in stews and chili, and you could even make tomato paste out of your own preserved tomatoes, real-time, if you wished.
Along a similar line, there is a fantastic book out there I just finished called, "Make the Bread, Buy the Butter," by Jennifer Reese, which talks about this exact subject. Part cookbook, part autobiography, part short story collection, it's a wonderful look at what things are better made at home, and what things may just not be worth it. Tomato paste comes to mind.
Haha but here's the question: have you done a side-by-side taste test? I'm curious to know. Unfortunately I'd imagine your homemade paste has a richer, fuller taste that is truly the essence of a homegrown tomato. Glad to hear about the book, was just looking for something new and that sounds excellent.
ReplyDeleteI haven't done a taste test yet, but I'm thinking mine WILL probably taste better...so all the work may be worth it (although I did not think this earlier when my back hurt from standing over the sink for three hours)! So we will see, once it's done being processed. Oh, and I think you will like the book, she is very funny and the recipes were very good! I checked it out of the library and enjoyed it so much I just bought my own copy from Amazon.
DeleteI made paste last year out of about 10 lbs. By the time it cooked down to paste there wasn't even enough to fill a pint jar. I wound up putting it in ice cube trays & freezing (after frozen I popped them out & put in a zip lock bag to store). But, boy was it good. I just used the last cube a few weeks ago
ReplyDeleteWell, if it's really good then it's probably worth all the loss from shrinkage. I seriously just never imagined how many tomatoes it takes to make just a teensy-weensy bit of paste, though!
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