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Many pasta recipes call for the use of
egg-shaped plum or Roma tomatoes, which have more meat and fewer
seeds than slicing tomatoes.
It's been my experience that vine-ripened
tomatoes peel easily. However, if you want to speed up the
process for those times when you want the skins on a batch of
tomatoes to slip right off or you need to peel supermarket
tomatoes, you can do so easily if you:
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Bring a large pan of water to a boil.
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Use a slotted spoon to lower tomatoes
into the boiling water. Boil for up to a minute or until the
skim just begins to split open.
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Use a slotted spoon to remove tomatoes
from the water. Plunge tomatoes into chilled or ice water to
stop the cooking process.
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Peel the tomatoes once they have
chilled. The skins will slip off easily now.
One way too seed tomatoes is to cut each
tomato in half, then hold it cut side down over a bowl and
squeeze to remove most of the seeds and juice. Use a spoon or
paring knife to scrape out any remaining seeds, if necessary.
Another alternative is to use a food mill,
which will work with peeled or unpeeled tomatoes. The tomato
pulp is forced through the mill and the skin and seeds remain
behind.
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Once you oven-roast tomatoes (by
placing them on a rack and baking in a 350°F
oven for about an hour, until tomato peel is
shriveled and much or most of the liquid in the
tomato has evaporated, depending on how you plan to
use the tomatoes), the skins will slip right off. |
Raw tomatoes do not freeze well, but
oven-roasted and dried tomatoes do. I freeze the roasted tomato
pulp by putting it in a container topped with some
Press-and-Seal Wrap pressed down onto the pulp before I
place the (labeled and dated!) lid on the container.
Don't waste the unused tomato paste leftover in the can.
Spoon out tablespoon-sized portions and place them on plastic
wrap or in sandwich baggies. Seal packages and store in freezer.
When you need tomato paste in a recipe, add the frozen paste
directly to sauce, no need to defrost.
I like to dry chunks of oven-roasted tomato
pulp in a
dehydrator long enough to remove a bit more of the lingering
liquid. (This prevents crystals from forming when I freeze the
pieces by spreading them out onto some
Press-and-Seal Wrap. Oddly enough, I've found that the
regular
Press-and-Seal Wrap works better for this than does the
freezer version of that wrap. I place another piece of
Press-and-Seal Wrap over the top of the pieces and press it
down and around the pieces to remove any air around the pieces.
I roll up or fold the
Press-and-Seal Wrapped tomato chunks and put them into a
labeled freezer bag. Then, when I want to use some of them, I
can clip off as many chunks as I need.
| A vinaigrette will help rehydrate
thawed oven-roasted tomato chunks or thawed dried
tomato pieces, which makes them perfect for a winter
salad. |
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The flavor is more concentrated in dried
tomatoes, so they'll taste a bit sweeter.
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Remove the seeds (by pushing
through a strainer or using a food mill) and then
pureé the pulp from
oven-roasted or grill-smoked tomatoes before drying
it out a bit more using a
food dehydrator. |
Using the
food dehydrator removes the extra moisture that would form
unwelcome ice crystals in the homemade version of tomato paste.
Freeze it in containers using the same method described above
for freezing oven-roasted tomato pulp.
| I prefer to dry oven-roasted or
grill-smoked tomatoes. They can be stored for
several weeks in the refrigerator if covered with
extra-virgin olive oil. |
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Otherwise, I freeze them using the same
method I use for oven-roasted tomato pulp.
When I will be freezing the "product"
before I use it, I prefer the flavor of oven-roasted or
grill-smoked dried tomatoes over that of dried raw tomatoes.
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