Tomatoes were proven to be associated with many health benefits and add a bit of flavor to your favorite kitchen recipes. However, the use of factory-made or ready-made tomato purees is quite a different story as opposed to your typical health benefit. Some health risk goes with these ready-made tomato products as the use of preservatives, chemicals, and added flavorings could cause you discomfort, dizziness, obesity, and many more. With all of these said, for sure a healthy way of consuming tomatoes, why not try to learn how to make tomato puree?
This would be the perfect way to maintain your healthy lifestyle while learning a thing or two about handmade tomato processing. Also, it would be quite fun to get your hands dirty occasionally.
Things to Prepare for Making a Tomato Puree
Before learning how to make tomato puree, you must first prepare the ingredients and other items to be used. Making a tomato puree is could be quite daunting when done the first time. To avoid any mishaps while creating your tomato puree, you can first prepare and organize the ingredients and other tools.
For ingredients, you need to prepare a bulk of tomatoes depending on how much you would want to make— the more, the merrier. By choosing the tomatoes, you could get the local ones or the hybrid ones, or you could even mix them up together for better flavor. You might also want to prepare a little bit of beetroot, sugar, salt, and citric acid for flavor enhancement and preservation.
For tools and equipment, you would need to have a blender for making a perfect puree texture. There should also be a pressure cooker on standby or a normal pot as an alternative. Then other basic tools such as knives, strainers, bowls, and spatula should be organized in an easily accessible manner for convenience in the kitchen. You should also prepare some transparent containers, either plastic or glass, to place and store your finished product.
How to Make Tomato Puree
There are two ways on how to make tomato puree. It could be classified as the easy ones or the hard ones. For starters, the easy one would be perfect for those who are not yet acquainted with their kitchens and just starting to explore the beauty of culinary magic. This will be an easy experience, but taking a little bit of caution would never go unappreciated for that perfect puree.
First, you must get the tomato and remove the eye part or the part where the stem originally resides. Then you could just directly cut the tomato or boil it down first to soften it up.
If you chose to boil it, you need to let it cool down first then remove the skin before cutting it down into pieces. Then after that, you could put it in the blender for 30 seconds and pour it into a bowl. However, if you immediately cut it down, you could place it in the blender and quickly make your puree in just a snap. Either way, these are the easy steps in creating a basic puree.
On the other hand, making the hard method will require a lot of time and effort. This will be perfect for people who are quite used to the kitchen and know how to create some dishes. On this one, you would need to have a mix of hybrid and local tomatoes. There should be ten hybrid ones and five local ones.
Similarly, you would need to remove the stem part and make a cross mark at the other end to make it easier to cut. You should also cut a bit of beetroot to make the color of the puree more vibrant, but you should not cut too much because it might turn pink. Place all these ingredients into a pressure cooker and a splash of water with cover for fast cooking. However, it should be noted that for better taste, it should have the cover removed.
Put it in high flame, and after boiling it down, get the tomato to cool down and peel it, the tomatoes individual then cut it. Get the chopped tomatoes and blend them for about ten seconds at high speeds and then strain them into a large bowl. You should also get the peel and squeeze the juice out of it, then get the water from the pressure cooker straining all of it into the bowl, adding three teaspoons of sugar and two teaspoons of salt. Put it on high flame the boil for 10 minutes then stirs it for another 15 minutes Before adding citric acid to make it last longer.
After all these steps, you could cool down the puree for 30 minutes and place it in a sterilized clean container for storage. Make sure to seal it tight and place it in a cool environment to make it last longer. This puree would be your perfect addition to creating other dishes such as gravy, soup, pasta, marinara, and so much more.
Why Should I Make a Tomato Puree?
Making homemade tomato puree brings you a lot more benefits than you think it will. By making one, you would be able to give yourself a healthier choice of consuming your tomato without having to buy a ready-made one. This will be more convenient and safer for you because you do not have to worry about possible health concerns and the accessibility of such products. You would also be able to know more a lot about how you could use tomatoes, and possibly it could lead you into exploring more about cooking and preparing tomatoes in the future. Also, this could be a fun pastime that you could use when you want to make something productive on your day, so why not? Get more tips on baby food.
Conclusion
Learning how to make tomato puree would be quite an experience for you. Like what was mentioned, you will get to enjoy the health benefits a tomato brings you, and the culinary wonders that a puree could add up to your dishes. With the whole process being easy, there is no reason not to make a tomato puree. Also, there is a sense of gratification when you are using something you created, so do not miss out on the opportunity to learn something and brag about it with your family and friends.