Tomato paste is used in many dishes. She especially helps out in winter, when tomatoes are expensive, and there are few vitamins in them. You can buy pasta in the store, but the taste is often far from ideal. For this reason, it is better to cook it yourself, which means that the pasta will be 100% natural.
Ingredients
To make homemade tomato paste, you will need the following products:
- 3 kg of tomatoes;
- 1 head of onion;
- 30 g of sugar;
- 3 bay leaves;
- 20 g salt;
- spices to taste;
- 5 ml of apple cider vinegar.
Preparation
First you need to pour water into the pot and wait until it boils. During this time, the tomatoes should be washed. After that, they are placed in boiling water for 5 minutes. Then the tomatoes are removed from the pan and the skin is removed from them. Next, the tomatoes are cut into small slices and seeds, black dots, and stalks are removed from them. Only the pulp is left. It should be transferred to a saucepan that is placed over medium heat and covered with a lid. While the tomatoes are boiling, you can chop the onion, which is added to the mass.
As soon as it boils, a lot of juice will come out of the tomatoes, which must be drained. This procedure is recommended to be repeated twice within 15 minutes. Then the pan must be removed from the heat and, using a blender, turn the mass into a puree. You can also use a food processor for these purposes. Add sugar, salt, spices, vinegar and bay leaf to the puree. Then everything is poured into a saucepan and cooked over a minimum heat for 3 hours. The mass should be stirred periodically so that it does not burn.
Rolling into banks
Once the tomato paste is ready, it should be rolled up in jars. As a rule, about 500 ml of the finished product is obtained from 3 kg of tomatoes. As a result, you will need to sterilize 2 jars of 250 ml. To do this, you need to pour water into a saucepan, boil it and put jars there. The sterilization process should be equal to a quarter of an hour. Boil the lids in another saucepan for 10 minutes. After that, tomato paste is laid out in jars and closed with lids. It can be stored for a year.
Advice
Various ingredients can be added to tomato paste, such as cinnamon, cloves, lemon juice, and more. But only they will need to be pulled out before placing the product in the cans. Of course, this is not easy to do, but you can put your favorite spices in a small bag and cook with the pasta, after which it is removed and thrown away. It is important to remember that it is recommended to cook the bay leaf for no more than 1 hour, after which it must be removed from the paste, otherwise it will acquire a bitter taste. If the final product turns out to be liquid, then it can be cooked not for 3, but for 4-5 hours. The thicker the paste, the more likely it will not develop mold later on.
