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.

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.

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.

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!