How To Can Tomato Paste

I have had many of you ask me how to can tomato paste. I love growing and canning tomatoes! Tomato products are by far my favorite thing to can! I feel so good providing organic tomato products for my family! AND, I am able to save a fortune!!

I can tomato sauce, tomato juice, whole tomatoes, salsa, spaghetti sauce, homemade rotel, tomato soup, V8 and my favorite pizza sauce every year.

I don’t know why I love canning tomatoes so much, but I do. It just seems so easy and rewarding to me. It is a two step process for many of the items, but you also usually just need a boiling water bath rather than a pressure canner.

I love the color, the smell and the way that my kitchen seems to bustle with activity. I love how quickly I can prepare the jars. I also love the fact that there are so many quick and easy tomato products available to my family to use throughout the year.

I only make homemade pizza sauce 2 times a year, but we are able to use it over and over.  It just makes sense to can tomato products because I use them in everything. I don’t know that I have ever gone a week without using a tomato product of some sort!

During the winter the kids and I will have tomato soup at least once a week. It is so quick and easy to heat up a jar of my delicious, organic homemade low sodium tomato soup. I love it!!

We have 140 tomato plants this year, so hopefully we will have enough tomatoes to last us throughout the year!

So, how do you can tomato paste?

It is actually incredibly easy! I am sure that any of you that already can tomatoes, will be able to do this in no time! I would recommend using organic tomatoes to make your tomato paste. You use the top of the pot of tomatoes, and many times chemicals will float to the top. If you have used poisons on your plants, this means that many of the chemicals might end up in your tomato paste.

If you have never canned before, make sure to check out my post about how to can with my canning recipes. Also, you can see a video showing how to can here. You can check out all of my canning recipes here.

Here are the steps to making your own tomato paste:

Wash your organic tomatoes.

Peel the tomatoes. (Go here to learn how to peel tomatoes REALLY quickly!)

Place the tomatoes into the food processor, and puree them.

Once there are no large chunks to tomatoes, just pour the pureed tomatoes into a pot on the stove.  Bring the tomato puree to a simmer on the stove.

As the tomatoes begin to slowly boil, tomato foam will appear on the top. This foam is the tomato paste.

Get a spoon and skim off just the very top of this and place it into sterilized jars. You don’t want to get more than the foam on the top especially if you did not peel the tomatoes first because under the foam layer will be the skins and seeds of the tomato.

Place ½ tsp of lemon juice on the top of each half pint jar. Burp the jar. Place in a boiling water bath for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

I place my tomato paste in ½ pint or ¼ pint jars since recipes usually do not call for very much. This tomato paste will not be as thick as the paste in the stores. However, it will have the strong tomato flavor of tomato paste and be somewhat thick. Since you are using fresh tomatoes, the flavor is really delicious. I just use as much of my homemade tomato paste as a recipe would call for store bought tomato paste.

So, that is how to make homemade tomato paste! We have been making it for years, and it is SO easy, and basically FREE since we grow our own tomatoes. If you don’t already grow your own tomatoes, I highly recommend that you try growing some. You can read about how to grow tomatoes here. Hope that you enjoy it!

Find more more canning recipes here.

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