Tomato Paste

Tomato paste is a thick paste that is made by cooking tomatoes for several hours to reduce moisture, straining them to remove the seeds and skin, and cooking them again to reduce them to a thick, rich concentrate. Using any where from 100 to 5000 tomatos, depending on the container received. In contrast, tomato purée which consists of tomatoes that have been boiled briefly and strained, is a liquid with a consistency between crushed tomatoes and tomato paste.

It was traditionally made in parts of Sicily, southern Italy and Malta by spreading out a much-reduced tomato sauce on wooden boards. The boards are set outdoors under the hot August sun to dry the paste until it is thick enough, when scraped up, to hold together in a richly colored, dark ball. Today, this artisan product is harder to find than the industrial (much thinner) version.

In the UK, paste is referred to as purée or concentrate.

In the USA, tomato paste is concentrated tomato solids (no seeds or skin), sometimes with added high fructose corn syrup, and with a standard of identity (see 21 CFR 155.191). Tomato purée has a lower solids requirement.

Depending on its manufacturing conditions, tomato paste can be the basis for making ketchup or reconstituted tomato juice.

  • Hot break: heated to about 100 °C; pectin is preserved -> thicker -> ketchup
  • Warm break: heated to about 79 °C; colour is not preserved, but flavour is
  • Cold break: heated to about 66 °C; colour and flavour is preserved -> juice

Famous quotes containing the words tomato and/or paste:

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    In a thousand apparently humble ways men busy themselves to make some right take the place of some wrong,—if it is only to make a better paste blacking,—and they are themselves so much the better morally for it.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)