Finding a recipe on Pinterest for making homemade tomato paste made me jittery with excitement. Here I am with end of the summer tomatoes and a possible DIY project that will assist me in NOT throwing away 6 oz cans of organic tomato paste when only a tablespoon or maybe two was used. Dehydrate my numerous cherry tomatoes, turn them into tomato paste and freeze into small portions. No future waste, I know what’s in it, and I am not creating any new garbage…win, win, win. Now, don’t get me wrong, I didn’t find a recipe and run with it: rather, I researched a half dozen recipes about how to make your own tomato paste. The few recipes I liked consisted of cooking the tomatoes, running them through a food mill, and pouring the results onto a jellyroll pan to hang out in the oven for 2-3 hours at 350 degrees. This is tough to do in August and the recipes also called for garlic and olive oil. I wanted to re-create the paste called for in standard recipes and the paste we buy at the store does not contain either of those ingredients. The dehydrator was a consideration rather than the oven but the consistency post food mill was more like a soup; not possible to hold the liquid on a dehydrator tray. Frustrating but at least hubby will have some tasty tomato soup for his future grilled cheeses. The recipe I pulled from Pinterest was a perfect way to use up the glut of cherry-like heirloom tomatoes. She used romas, but I figured my ping-pong ball sized tomatoes would be the perfect fit for the job. I dried about 24 of them in the dehydrator, poured a cup or so of hot water over them, and I processed in the Vita Mix.
Easy Homemade Tomato Paste
Loosely interpreted from: https://jarohoney.com/old-fashioned-tomato-paste-raw-vegan-paleo/
1.Sharpen your knife and slice the cherry or tomatoes of choice into uniform slices.
Admittedly, the caveat is this doesn’t make a lot of paste. But when hubby keeps bringing in bags of tomatoes from the garden, I am looking for any way to use them up. This is easy, and since it doesn’t consist of any boiling water, I am all over it.