How to Make Tomato Paste and Tomato Sauce from Frozen Tomatoes
Since today is National Chili Day (the 3rd Thursday in February), and because I just recently used my frozen surplus of tomatoes for chili earlier this month, I thought this would be a perfect topic to share while we're all itching to get out in the garden... and maybe cooking up some ideas for how to win that chili contest next year.
I don't have any pictures of the chili that we made with the processed tomatoes (we had a chili party to get to, and then all the chili got eaten), but I did take pictures while I was processing the tomatoes so you can see what that's like and decide if you want to try growing some sauce tomatoes this year for your favorite chili recipe next year! I highly recommend it! Let me break it down for you so you know what to expect and can work National Chili Day into your garden plan this year.
Late last summer, just when I had an unexpected (but very welcome) surplus of saucing tomatoes, I got a random text from one of my amazing sister-in-laws, to my fellow gardener mother and I, that you can freeze tomatoes. Even though it seemed obvious, I was a bit apprehensive about putting my first truly successful tomato harvest through an experiment that might not turn out so well.
Though, since I was a bit surprised to have as many tomatoes as I did (due to an unexpectedly positive result from an experiment I lovingly called a 'torture chamber'), I was willing to sacrifice some tomatoes to the frozen tundra for a few months to see what would happen. So, if you have wondered about freezing tomatoes and what they turn out like, I've got you covered.
Sometime soon I will share a story about my torture experiment, but the good news is that no torturing actually occurred and the result?... more tomatoes than I had time to do anything with after weekends full of making zucchini bread, grape jam, and sweet gherkin pickles! But like I said, I had planted varieties for making sauces, so this all ended up working out quite nicely. Though, if you've got a bunch of slicing tomatoes or snacking tomatoes in your freezer right now, I'm sorry to say that you probably won't be too happy with how they will come out if you're looking to use them for slicing or snacking.
Anyway, so when I was pinched for time, I took my sister's tip and tossed all those tomatoes into gallon freezer bags and threw them into my freezer, wondering if it would be a waste of space or, fingers crossed, the best way to prep the tomatoes for saucing (which I had read somewhere during a few minutes of hasty internet research).
First, I started with three different types of tomato seeds, all from Burpee: Burpee's Long-Keeper Tomato (which I think is meant more for slicing, but they have a good amount of meat in them, so I decided to try them for saucing anyway). Then, the classic San Marzano variety for all of you pasta-lovers out there, and lastly, the show-stealer in this story, Burpee's SuperSauce Hybrid (I also highly recommend!)
I grew a couple of each plant and got several bags of tomatoes, even though I started the plants from seed outdoors in mid June and our season ends in mid September. In the end, it was probably about enough for two recipes, depending on what you're making and if you're making sauce or paste. I made both, used the paste for chili, and saved the sauce for a future recipe.
Despite starting them late (due to an even earlier, failed experiment with my indoor seedlings), the plants did fairly well for the following reasons:
I gave the plants fresh soil (never had tomatoes or potatoes grown in it before),
I gave them each their own large barrel or bucket with enough room for rooting and branching,
I kept them in a sunny and very warm location (80-95 degrees during the day),
I gave them stakes to support the heavy fruits these varieties product,
I gave them some basic bagged "tomato" fertilizer per the bag's directions, and
I watered them whenever the top inch of soil was no longer damp.
If I had started them indoors and transplanted them successfully, I probably would have had two to three times the harvest. Gonna get that right this year!
Okay, so now to the juicy part. Literally. After sitting in freezer bags in the freezer for about 5 months, I took them out and let them thaw on the counter over night. I recommend putting them on a flat baking sheet to catch any leaky tomato juice that might come out of the bags and to help the tomatoes thaw evenly. If you're hard pressed for time, you could also set the baking sheet over the exhaust fan of your oven while it is on, and flip the bags over and around ever so often to help them thaw evenly.
You'll need several glass bowls or measuring cups if you're taking a zero-waste approach: A large bowl to collect the initial juice and milled pulp, a bowl to collect the skins which will slide right off, a bowl to scrape your seedy leftover mash into after milling (there's LOTS of sauce left in that mash still, so don't trash it!), and another bowl to strain your pulp into if you're looking to make paste. Get a spatula, a mesh strainer, some salt and lemon juice, another baking sheet for making paste and a large sauce pan for sauce. I also ended up using ice cube trays to freeze my sauce in for future use.
Lastly, you'll need some kind of food mill. I have a couple store-bought mills that I purchased for canning, but a well-seasoned gardening neighbor of mine told me about the older style mills that she uses for apple sauce, so when I happened to find one at a church rummage sale for a couple bucks, I bought it just to try. Unsurprisingly, and just like my neighbor said for herself, I prefer the older mill over the newer design that have a metal crank and disks. (I can't wait to see if the same holds try for processing grapes later this year.)
First, you'll want to remove the skins from the tomatoes, which is a bit of a messy process if you aren't prepared for the juice explosion. Some people recommend slicing a cross into the bloom end of the tomatoes before freezing them. I tried this on some of my Marzanos, but I felt like it actually made more work while peeling. There were too many pieces of skin left on the slippery tomato meat that made it take more time to peel off than the unsliced fruits. Also, more juice leaked out of the sliced tomatoes during the thawing process, which made for a bit more of a juicy mess in the freezer bags.
I did not have any issues peeling skins or dealing with puddles of tomato juice from the unsliced fruits because the thawed water content stayed inside the tomato skin. It is quite satisfying to press your finger into an unsliced thawed tomato. Just don't press too hard, or you'll end up with tomato juice all over your shirt and the wall and probably your face as well. Or, put on an apron and glasses and go for it! It could be fun.
To prevent a juice explosion, I held the tomato over my food mill and gently punctured the skin with my thumbnail just enough to break the skin and let the juice run down into the bowl beneath. Then, all you have to do is hold the tomato by the stem and push the tomato meat out through the slit in the skin. The skin will come right off, except for the point where it is attached to the stem. Pinch the stem off along with the skin, and let the meat fall into the food mill. You can save the destemmed skins and dehydrate them for tomato powder if you like. I'll have to report back next year regarding the viability and germination rate of frozen and milled tomato seeds.
As I mashed and milled the tomato meat, I would occasionally use a spatula to scrape the pulp off the outside of the mill. I am not sure if this improved the milling efficiency any, but it sure is satisfying. I did this in several batches of tomatoes so as not to overfill my food mill. The resulting pulp is very watery, and not suitable for much in its immediate form. So to quickly reduce the water content, I strained the milled pulp through a mesh strainer into a separate bowl. This takes a bit of time if you just let it sit, but I found that constantly moving the pulp around and pushing it to the center of the strainer would help more liquid drain out.
At this point, I then took a separate bowl and used the same strainer and spatula to further process the pulp out of the seedy mash that was left over in the food mill. I also did this separately with the skins, and I was surprised at how much I got out of this additional work. This more than doubled the amount of pulp that I had collected from the first round of milling! You can see from the two measure cups that one has all the liquid from the original skinning step, with the pulp from the mash is much thicker. This is where you can make decisions about what you want to make with the various products.
I saved the seeds and the skins from mine because I have been exploring zero-waste strategies since I started following Spicy Moustache on YouTube. For the thicker sauce, I used this to make paste, which is created by baking the pulp, with salt and lemon juice. For the more watery sauce, I drained some of it as described earlier, and kept it to make actual sauce, added salt and lemon juice at this point. Then for the rest of the watery sauce, I cooked down to make a tomato stock for soups, again with salt and lemon juice. (Educate yourself on C. botulinum, if you are unfamiliar.)
The key at this point is to make sure you cook or bake down your tomato products thoroughly. You may notice that the uncooked tomato almost spells spoiled. As heat is applied, that will start to go away and be replaced by a sweeter smell that is much more like pizza or pasta sauce. This is how I tell if it's done or not, which is especially useful when making sauce or stock. Baking tomato to get paste takes longer than that, and I assess doneness based on the sheen and color of the sauce on the baking sheet. A flat brick red is perfect, though you may have some roasted edges. It's all good flavor.
In the end, I got two large mason jars full of tomato stock, enough paste for one chili recipe, and enough sauce for a couple pizzas, bowls of pasta, or maybe a small jar of homemade ketchup. That comes from about four gallon-size freezer bags filled loosely in a single layer of tomatoes, laying flat. This year I hope to double that amount simply by starting the tomatoes indoors and NOT doing what I did last year that killed them all off as seedlings. But that's a story about dirt, something I'll write about some other day.
I hope you enjoyed all the juicy details of my frozen tomato exploration and I hope it got you interested in growing some sauce tomatoes in your garden this year, or heck! Grow a SuperSauce Hybrid or San Marzano on your back patio and have a rockin' story (with pictures) to tell at next year's chili party.
It is so nice to have the finer homegrown and processed products that have better taste and texture and true freshness, even after being frozen! Grab a pot, a bag of dirt and some sauce tomato seeds, and try it out in a warm and sunny spot near you. Then come National Chili Day next year, you'll have a truly exceptional ingredient to add to your soon-to-be-famous chili recipe. The key ingredient: your own frozen tomatoes.
If you like to run experiments or try new things in your garden and in your kitchen, you might like some tools I've built and included in the My Garden Log™ planner and journal:
There is a planting scheduler to help you get your timing right so you can maximize your tomato plants' growing season to increase your yield.
My handy recipe calculator can help you determine how many plants you need to grow to have everything you want for all your favorite recipes;
Or, there's a yield calculator for determining how much you can expect to get out of the number and variety of plants you plan to grow.
There's also a processing and storing planner to help you plan out how you'll handle your next harvest, plus harvest and storage logs to take note of your yield, how much gets processed and stored, and how long the stored inventory lasts.
If you like this content, let me know! I'm just getting this blog started and want to share my gardening experiences along with the tools I've designed to make the whole year flow more easily for you. Follow me on Facebook and Instagram as I relearn how to use social media regularly, after spending nearly a decade away from it all. As they say, it's a journey, come share it with me!
And of course, happy gardening!
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