Yesterday was a full-on recipe day as in it took the whole damn day for this one — 7.5 hours pre-freezer time. I had a bunch of tomatoes from my parents garden and some more from the grocery store, many of which were teetering on the edge of tasty and too far gone. I’ve been having a few cups of tomatoes a day which while tasty, is not great for my messed up joints. 🍅

So before these went bad, I decided on a challenge! Digging into some of my Italian roots, I researched maybe 10 recipes to find a process that didn’t involve a meat grinder or weird ingredients.

In total used about 5 pounds of tomatoes, 3 tbsp of olive oil, 14 grams of sea salt and 4 grams of citric acid. That’s it!

Put 2 tbsp of olive oil in a big pot. Heated that up while I quartered the tomatoes. Cooked that for about an hour on medium heat, stirring every 15ish minutes. Them triple strained that, removing all skins and as much seeds as possible through a large fine mesh strainer. Then returned that to the same pot, added in the salt and citric acid. I cooked that on medium for about 90 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes.

Once it had reduced about 1/3 in volume, I transferred it to a baking dish oiled with 1 tbsp of olive oil. Then I put that in a preheated 200 degree oven. Every 20 minutes I would remove it from the oven, stir and smooth it back down. I did this for just over 3.5 hours until it was tomato paste consistency with all of the water evaporating.

Now some recipes said you could store it in a jar in the fridge, but you’d need to cover it with oil each time you used it. Instead, I chose to transfer it to silicone ice cube trays to freeze overnight and then transferred that to an airtight container to remove and use as needed.

These will be great for just a touch of flavor with meat, pizza, bread and more. These cubes will pack a massive flavor punch so I’ll be sure to taste before adding more salt to whatever I add them too! Definitely quicker and cheaper to just buy a can or two though!

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