A few months ago, on the hunt for topics for this fine newsletter, I polled the masses (read: asked people on Instagram) for the ingredients they struggled to use up. The deafening chorus of “tomato paste” replies could not be ignored.
A pantry staple, tomato paste is a thick, concentrated purée of slow-cooked tomatoes that have been strained of seeds and skins, and cooked once more to extract as much moisture as possible.
The promise of all that umami can lead you to pick up a four-and-a-half-ounce tube or a six-ounce can with few concrete plans for it.
Of course, recipes that call for an entire can or tube are the path of least resistance. Among them are Ali Slagle’s tomato-lentil soup with goat cheese, in which its deeply sweet and savory qualities rest upon cooking down the tomato paste with garlic and onion to concentrate its flavors even further. “So simple, inexpensive and delicious with a depth of flavor,” one reader, Elizabeth, wrote about the soup.
Ali employs the same strategy in her recipe for beans and greens alla vodka, a rich and satisfying stew that, despite its hearty, comforting appearance, takes only 20 minutes to make. And Yasmin Fahr doctors up a tube of tomato paste with crushed Calabrian chiles for the fiery sauce in her new recipe for spicy tomato pasta with arugula.
But the reality is you don’t have to use a can all at once if you store it efficiently. To avoid waste (and shame), simply scoop tablespoons of paste onto a plate lined with parchment paper and pop that into the freezer until they’re solid. Store the frozen blobs in a container or a zip-top bag so the paste is readily at your disposal and as fresh as when you opened it.
You can then stretch it out over a few recipes. One six-ounce can contains roughly 12 tablespoons of tomato paste, which can get you through Ali’s lentils cacciatore (three tablespoons), vegetarian Bolognese (four tablespoons) and cheesy white bean-tomato bake (three tablespoons), and Naz Deravian’s tomato-egg rice (two tablespoons).
