Over the past year, our passata recipe has evolved considerably. We still make the roasted tomato version, but Pete now combines that with a fresh passata that he makes by simply blanching, processing and draining Roma tomatoes. The end result of this new method is a bright red, thick puree which is both sweet and clean tasting.
1. Start with good quality Roma tomatoes – the ones we bought from Jimmy at the markets were thick fleshed, and quite dry inside.
2. Cut these in half and squeeze the excess juice and seeds out as best you can. The liquid inside the tomatoes is often slightly sour – removing and discarding it now leaves just the sweet pulp in the finished sauce.
3. Blanch the tomatoes briefly in boiling water – the aim is simply to heat them up and soften them so they’ll pass through the food mill. You don’t want to actually cook them too much. Drain well.
4. Pass the cooled tomatoes through a food mill or tomato juicer. We put the extruded pulp back through a couple more times to extract every last bit of flavour from it – usually the final pass produces a thick paste which enriches the sauce.
5. Pour boiling water through a clean cloth, then use it to line a colander over a large bowl. Pour the passata into the cloth and allow it to drain until thick. Whatever you do, don’t throw out the juice that collects in the bowl below! That’s delicious, pure tomato water – more on that in a future post.
Once your passata has drained thoroughly, it can be frozen in small containers for future use. We mix ours with roasted tomato passata, to create a tomato concentrate which we find ideal for pastas and pizzas.
Click here for a printable version of this recipe
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 
Wonderful Celia – looks like you’ve made a good quantity too. Did you do anything with the seeds you extracted at all? I dream of the day when we can grow enough (any even, if last year is anything to go by) tomatoes to make our own sauce.
Choclette, we just compost the seeds and juice. We have bought some old seed varieties to try planting for next year though!
We usually buy boxes of Roma tomatoes from the markets at $10 per 10kg box and turn half the box into fresh passata and the other half into roasted, then combine the two. Pete’s adamant that the Roma toms are out of season, we’ll go back to canned Italian tomatoes – he doesn’t want to go to the trouble of making passata from any other variety (but he is ridiculously fussy about his tomatoes…) :)
Squish squish it must be the delicious season of mellow fruitfulness down your way! That looks good and I like the idea of fresh tomato passata very much – and so clean and tidy – no – wait a minute – is that a drip of tomato I see on the side of that container? hee hee.
Here on the other side of the world a box of organic seedlings has just this minute arrived from Riverford. Guess what I am doing this afternoon?
Hehe…you and your clean kitchen, Jo! Passata making is probably tidier than chocolate making, but only just! The great find in this process was the tomato water – it’s gold (as my teenagers say)…
Oh. My. Goodness.
Does that ever look like my kinda thing. I could totally see that being a nice NOT WATERY base for my pizza..
Um, sooo, if you happen to be traveling to NC from your home so far away…put an extra jar in your case for me…And when tomatoes are good again here (did you read about the Florida Freeze? RUINED TOMATOES.), I will do this.
Barb, if I could, you know I’d ship you some, but it’s all been frozen… :)
I love the 3 headed food mill – stuff going and coming out of many ends! I need one ASA. I think I’ll have to try this method! Enjoy your weekend
That food mill looks like a nifty contraption that I could do with. The tomatoes look lovely. The perfect base for so many delectable dishes.
Hippy, the mill is available at kitchenware outlets – we bought ours in Leichhardt.
Oz, there were two sorts available, a metal one and a plastic one. The plastic one had a nice screw fitting which pushes the pulp through. It works well, but tends to leak a little from the handle, and you have to make sure your pulp isn’t too hot when you put it through. We’ve used it a lot since I wrote about it here.
Celia, what a gorgeous colour you got in your photo’s!
Looking forward to the tomato water post!
It’ll be up tomorrow morning, Amanda! This batch of tomatoes really was the most gorgeous red…
I agree, starting with excellent tomatoes makes a wonderful passata! :D It makes such a difference!
You know, I do have the exact food mill you do, but don’t use it very often. Shame on me….
Truth is, whenever I put it to use, I make a fantastic mess in the kitchen – maybe if I use it more I’ll get better handling it. Sometimes the suction on the base is not too strong, and…. you get the picture, right? (sigh)
Very nice method to deal with tomatoes….
Lorraine, we’ve been really fortunate last few weeks at Flemington – the Romas have been superb!
Sally, I do know what you mean – the leaking handle can get very annoying, though the suction is usually very good on ours. I hope you do try this though, because I’d bet that imagination of yours could think of something really clever to do with the tomato water.. :)
Do you remove the skin of the tomatoes before you process them?
No, the juicer or food mill removes the skin – that’s most of the leftover pulp you can see in the second last photo above.