13 Ways to Cook Every Spoonful of Leftover Tomato Paste
Never toss this flavor enhancer!
How many recipes call for an entire six-ounce can of tomato paste? Basically none. Most call for a small amount but you must buy four times what you need (same with herbs). While I have no numbers to back me up—just a hunch—I imagine millions of dollars’ worth of opened, partial cans of neglected tomato paste sit languishing in American refrigerator doors and back shelves as I type this, destined for the trash. Such a waste of umami—and tomatoes!
Whether you buy canned tomato paste or make it yourself, the following ideas will help you waste less of it.
Freeze leftover tomato paste if you won’t use it within a few days
Last week, I transformed 20 pounds of end-of-season, discounted fresh tomatoes into tomato paste. Although I spent an entire day doing this, the process is mostly hands-off so I was able to work on other stuff in between tomato-paste-cooking tasks. Homemade tastes incredible and you need only a little bit to enhance a recipe (hence, the need for lots of recipes, which we’ll get to soon).
I froze some of the paste in tablespoon-size blobs on a cookie sheet. After the blobs had frozen, I popped them off with a pie server (it was sitting nearby but a spatula also works), filled a large jar with them and put the jar in the freezer. (Go here for more info on freezing food in glass jars.)
Ice-cube trays also work. Fill, freeze for several hours, then transfer the cubes to containers and return them to the freezer.
When you need tomato paste, grab one or two blobs (or cubes) and toss them into whatever you’re cooking. Frozen tomato paste thaws quickly.
The recipes
1. Homemade ketchup
Love ketchup but hate the ultra-processed store-bought versions and their excessive plastic packaging? If you have leftover tomato paste on hand, you can make ketchup in less time than it takes to run to the store and buy a bottle of it.
Thin out the tomato paste with kombucha vinegar or apple cider vinegar to taste and stir in honey or maple syrup (also to taste), followed by a pinch each of cinnamon, cumin, cayenne pepper and salt. (My cookbook includes a recipe for fermented ketchup. So good!)
2. Barbecue sauce
Ketchup is just a few simple ingredients away from barbecue sauce.
3. Dips
Stir a spoonful of leftover tomato paste into a bean dip, use it in lieu of fresh tomatoes in refried beans, add a bit to hummus, or sour cream and so on.
4. Tomato-based sauces
Thicken up sauces quickly by adding a spoonful of tomato paste to pizza sauce or your favorite pasta sauce.
5. Enchilada sauce
Enchilada sauce is easy to make and freezes well. Try this recipe from New York Times Cooking.
6. Red rice
Whip up a batch of arroz rojo to go with your enchiladas—or any Mexican dish. I could eat this side dish every day. Go here for the recipe. Or add a bit of tomato paste to other grains as they cook, such as farro or quinoa.
7. Colored pasta
Stir leftover tomato paste into pasta dough for a splash of color. You’ll need to very slightly adjust the amount of liquid in the dough. Go here for green pasta as a guide.
8. Baked beans
I love this Alton Brown recipe. I’ve never made it with the bacon it calls for and yet it still tastes amazing. If you’re vegetarian or vegan, sub in lots of fat for the bacon—butter, olive oil or a combination of fats.
9. Shakshuka
This one-pan dish of eggs poached in a tomato-based sauce is easy, delicious and satisfying. This recipe calls for fresh tomatoes and—you guessed it—tomato paste!
10. Borscht
You’ll need a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste for my version of this traditional Ukrainian beet soup. Go here for the recipe. It calls for not only the beets but the beet greens so while you use up your tomato paste, you’ll also use all the beet parts. The blog post includes a recipe for beet kvass to put the beet scraps to work. If you like, turn the borscht into a new dish the next day by poaching eggs in it. Go here for the borschuka recipe.
11. Soup base
Add leftover tomato paste to scrap vegetable broth or bone broth for amazing flavor.
12. Lentil soup
When my daughter MK was a toddler, she ate homemade lentil soup almost every day. It contained brown lentils, onions, lots of garlic, carrots and a big dollop of tomato paste. MK loved it and it was so easy to make. The recipe was similar to this one.
13. Pan deglazer
Have your caramelized onions left a pattern of crusty brown bits all over the bottom of your pan (or pot)? Tomato paste will help clean those up. Simply add a spoonful and stir. While deglazing the pan, you’ll also caramelize that tomato paste, adding even more umami to your dish.
Upcoming free sourdough starter workshop
Thursday, November 9th, 6pm PT/9pm ET
After starting your starter in this workshop, depending on the temperature of your kitchen (and other factors, but mostly the temperature of your kitchen), you should accumulate enough sourdough discard to make at least crackers for Thanksgiving dinner. If your sourdough starter is slightly precocious, you will be able to bake a loaf of bread just in time.
Go here for more info on the class and to register.
