Making tomato paste with dried tomatoes

[pepperhead212]

I finally got around to trying something I've been thinking of doing - making tomato paste using rehydrated dried tomatoes! It worked great, using 2 year old tomatoes. I just soaked them in hot water, and used 5 oz, which is 5 lbs worth of tomatoes. I blended it up, in 2 batches in the Vitamix, which was just over 2 lbs. I cooked them down for 1 1/2 hrs, to 15.5 oz, scraping it frequently. The flavor and aroma is incredible, due to starting out with dried tomatoes.
5 oz dried tomatoes, rehydrated to 2 lbs of sauce. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

Cover I use for the wok, for messy things. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

Tomato paste, cooked down just an hour. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

Cooked down 1 1/2 hours. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

5 lbs worth of dried tomatoes, cooked down to 15.5 oz. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

[Shule]

Cool! Great idea.

That reminds me of something unrelated, but it's something that might give you more ideas. Lately, I've been freezing alpine strawberries because they taste good frozen, and make a longer-lasting, more substantial, seemingly more filling snack than fresh ones. A lot of our alpine strawberries dry to a crisp on the plant; however, I've found that if I wash the dry crispy ones and freeze them, they rehydrate a bit in a way that gives them really nice, gently chewy, texture and taste. If you gently wet some dry tomatoes and froze them in a bag, I wonder what would happen, and if it might make turning them into paste a bit easier.

[worth1]

They use dry chilies all the time to make a paste or thick sauce.
I use chili powder to make rich sauces.
With the tomatoes you would have to put them in a blender or food processor after simmering for awhile.
But it is doable.