tomato paste - domates salçası

While we were in Turkey my grandmother made homemade tomato paste. I wanted to know how she's doing it so i grabbed my camera & took some pictures to capture each steps. And that's what i want to share with you. This is just how my grandmother does it.

Ingredients 

tomatoes
salt

We used about 100 kg of roma tomatoes which made about 15-20 kg of tomato paste (i know that's a lot but we actually made that much so we can bring them to Germany & we even didn't brought all of them).

Preparing the tomatoes:

There are different ways to do that.

Option 1

Just peel the tomatoes. After that use a food processor if you want to have a smooth paste or grate them if you like to have some texture in your tomato paste.

Here is a trick on peeling them easily:

Carve a shallow X at the bottom of each tomato & put them, few at a time, in a large pot of boiling water just for about 10-15 seconds. Remove the tomatoes from boiling water & place them into a bowl filled with ice water. Now you can gently pull away the skin from the tomato, starting at the carved X.

Option 2

Roughly chop the tomatoes & put them in a large pot. Bring the tomatoes to a boil over high heat & cook them just until they soften. You can add a little bit of salt if you want to. Run the cooked tomatoes through a food mill or push them through a sieve.

Option 3

Run the tomatoes through a juicer.

Since we had a lot of tomatoes the seller was nice to borrow us his juicer which was great for juicing large amounts. So it took less then an hour to prepare our tomatoes. 

Making the actual tomato paste

There are different ways as well.

Option 1

After preparing the tomatoes boil in a large pot together with the salt to reduce the water of the tomatoes & it becomes the thickness that you desire. Make sure to stir it regularly. This could take several hours. So plan your day if you wanna do it this way. Now you can fill your tomato paste into your sanitized jars.

Option 2

After preparing the tomatoes pour into a baking tray & roast it in the oven for a few hours until the desired thickness is reached. Stir it regularly & then fill your jars with the paste.

Option 3

After preparing the tomatoes pour it into a baking tray or anything else that's wide & not that high. Let it rest for a few days. But make sure that it faces the sun. Stir it every 4-5 hour. If you're letting it rest outside your house keep an eye on it so no dirt or insect will get in it.

We mixed option 1 & 3. My grandmother boiled the juiced tomatoes outside on the fire together with the salt to make it a bit thicker but not that thick. After that we continued with option 3 by resting the paste under sunlight. That way we reduced the resting time for option 3.