Tomatoes to Tomato Paste - It Just Takes a Little More Time

Tomatoes to Tomato Paste

It Just Takes a Little More Time

In the post, "The Journey, Tomatoes to Tomato Paste", I made the statement that the process for the creation of tomato paste was the same with one exception - Time.  So once you've gotten the tomatoes to the crock pot and they look like this: 

Set the crock pot to low and leave the lid perpendicular over the top to allow to plenty of steam rising. It will take about 24-48 hours to evaporate enough of the liquid to create excellent tomato paste. If you're available to stir the mixture with a rubber spatula every few hours, the color of your paste will be more consistent. I was not.  So the pictures below show patches of caramelized paste. It did not burn so the caramelization didn't effect the taste.

In terms of volume, a full crockpot only netted 10 tablespoons of paste. However, this is excellent tomato paste. Being that this paste would only fill (1) 1 cup canning jar, I decided to freeze the paste in 2T blocks.  I did this by spreading wax paper on a cookie sheet and with a two tablespoon measure,  I scooped up the paste. 

Leveled my measuring spoon and the holding it over the desired position on the cookie sheet, I flipped it over quickly and gave it a hard rap against the sheet.

 This dislodged the paste in a fairly cube like shape. 

I took the tray to the freezer and left to set for about about 12 hours, which was overnight. In the morning, I fetched the tray with the frozen cubes from the freezer and grabbed a quart-sized freezer bag.  I labeled the bag (I no longer trust my memory; I label the bags faithfully).  The label read, "2T tomato paste 2016."

I stirred 2T of this paste into some beef broth left over from a roast I made.  It made a delicious sauce to pour over fried egg plant.