Tomato purée is a thick and smooth concentrated tomato paste that is used as an essential condiment while cooking gravy based dishes.
Most of the time we all buy ready to use Tetra packs or cans of purée from the supermarkets but market-brought tomato purée is artificially colored and also contains chemical preservatives.
So, it’s better to make tomato purée at home and, believe me, the procedure to make tomato purée is very easy and the best part is that homemade tomato purée is preservative-free too.
To make tomato purée we need blanched tomatoes, salt and sugar and the procedure is very simple and easy.
Note –
- Always take fresh, firm and red tomatoes for making purée.
Prep time – 10 minutes.
Blanching time – ½ hour
Cooking time – 20 minutes.
Level of cooking – very easy
Ingredients-
- ½ kg tomatoes
- ½ tsp salt
- ½ tsp sugar
Method-
- Wash tomatoes and wipe with a clean kitchen towel.
- With knife put the cross sign on tomatoes.
- Boil sufficient water, switch off the flame.
- Put tomatoes in boiled water, cover the vessel with the lid and keep it aside for half an hour.
- Now take out tomatoes from the water.
- Peel the skin of the tomatoes.
- Cut tomatoes into halves and remove the stem and chop it roughly.
- Blend the chopped tomatoes in the blender
- Strain the puréed tomatoes in a steel vessel, discard the seeds.
- On medium flame cook pureed tomatoes in a steel wok (kadhai) add salt and sugar.
- Occasionally keep stirring, but as the mixture thickens stir it continuously until it is thick.
- Switch off the flame.
- Let tomato purée cool.
- Divide tomato purée in small portion and pack in an airtight container for one-time use and freeze it.
- You can also freeze tomato purée in ice trays and then transfer cubes in zip lock packs.
Note – When required, take out the frozen tomato purée half hour before you start cooking.
