Michael "Dog3" Lonergan wrote:
> Okay, I've gone through the cabinets. For some reason I stock a lot of
> tomato paste. Never do I have enough tomato sauce or diced tomatoes. Is
> there a way to make tomato sauce out of paste? I'm sure it's a st00pid
> question but I'm asking anyway. A pizza thread got me to thinking about
> it.
>
> Michael

I always thought paste had a starch-based filler in it. I prefer
tomato puree over sauce - thicker and more flavorful, but a little more
spendy.

-L.

-L. wrote:

> I always thought paste had a starch-based filler in it. I prefer
> tomato puree over sauce - thicker and more flavorful, but a little more
> spendy.


Funny how the same word means something a little different in a
different context. USUALLY paste means something starchy. With
tomatoes, however, the paste is the most additive free product on the
shelf. When I look at the ingredients list for tomato paste, it reads:
"tomatoes." For the other products like sauce, puree and diced
tomatoes, there's generally salt, spices, garlic, maybe some odd
sounding chemicals. I'm not suggesting that there's anything wrong with
any of it. (Tomato products are the one place where I'm glad to buy
canned and prefer it over fresh. I buy paste, sauce, puree, and
sometimes diced. Nowadays I like Muir Glen (not because it's organic,
but because I like the flavor), but before Muir Glen I got Contadina.)
Also, you'd think that tomato paste would taste like puree after you've
added water to the right consistency, but it always maintains a
different flavor, a sort of bitterness. That will do in a pinch (which
was the topic of this thread, what to do when you have paste and have
run out of sauce), but in the long run, it makes sense to buy all the
products (paste, sauce, puree, diced) by the case when they're on sale
and replace them when they run low.


--Lia

In article . com>,
"-L." > wrote:

> I always thought paste had a starch-based filler in it. I prefer
> tomato puree over sauce - thicker and more flavorful, but a little more
> spendy.
>
> -L.

Never heard of that - I'll check a can when I get home, but I always
thought it was just seriously reduced tomato puree.
-Barb
<http://jamlady.eboard.com> Updated 7-5-06, Pannekoeken
"If it's not worth doing to excess, it's not worth doing at all."

Melba's Jammin' wrote:

> In article . com>,
> "-L." > wrote:
>
> > I always thought paste had a starch-based filler in it. I prefer
> > tomato puree over sauce - thicker and more flavorful, but a little
> > more spendy.
> >
> > -L.
>
> Never heard of that - I'll check a can when I get home, but I always
> thought it was just seriously reduced tomato puree.

Most brands of "puree" are just reconstituted tomato paste.

What I like is pureed tomatoes. I take a big can of whole tomatoes and
puree them in the blender. Push the puree through a sieve to remove the
seeds. Nice pure tomato goodness for many uses.

It's pretty liquid because of the juice they pack the tomatoes in, if
you wanted it more like canned puree you could drain that off before
blending.



Brian
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