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Question by peapatchisland: What are the differences between tomato paste and tomato puree?
What are the differences between tomato paste and tomato puree? Are they made quite differently? They look almost the same. And what are their unique purposes / uses in cooking? Would there be any recipes where you would never use one but use the other?
Best answer:
Answer by Brutally Honest
Consistency mostly. Paste is VERY thick, with almost no fluid (it’s well… PASTE), whereas pureed tomatoes are ones that have just been made into a liquid state…similar to a thick tomato soup. You’d use puree for spaghetti sauce; you’d use paste for flavoring.
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tomato paste is thicker and more concentrate. i don’t believe there is any receipe where you can’t use one or the other… unless you need to have something of a thicker consistency… like if you were putting it on top of meatloaf.
Paste is much more concentrated because it has been cooked down longer. Puree is hardly cooked at all, just pulped and cooked with less juice than sauce until it reaches a slightly thick stage.
Paste is sweeter and deeper in flavor, but in a pinch you could dilute it and use it. It would never taste quite the same as puree though. It would be much harder to substitute puree for paste, but you could try cooking it down I guess, but that’s an awful lot of work. Easier to go to the store and get some paste.
They’re using paste more and more to add complexity to dishes… they brown it a bit in oil and then add the liquids in. I’ve always loved the flavor of tomato paste and included it in my regular spaghetti sauce. But when using fresh tomatoes to make a light sauce I never use it because it overpowers the fresh flavors.
Puree I also use in my spaghetti sauce, but also for goulash and other casserole type dishes. It is often called for in marinades too… it’s not that different from tomato sauce, just pulpier and maybe with less added flavors (sometimes the sauces have garlic and other flavors already added but with puree you get a cleaner slate to start with.)
Hope that helps! Happy Cooking!
Paste is thicker, very concentrated used as a thickener in sauces; puree is a blended/pureed tomato product, also used as a base for sauces.
AHHHH. so many questions. First tomato puree is just that, pureed tomatoes. Tomato paste is, to put it simply, concentrated tomato puree without the water. It is alot thicker and much more… ummm… tomatoey. Does it really matter how they are made? You in essence could use either in all your recipes, however you would have to change the recipe accordingly. For instance- a homemade spaghetti sauce may call for tomato paste and X amount of water. Well you could substitute both with tomato puree (provided you have enough puree to equal the total amount of paste AND water together). As a general rule, i use tomato paste over puree in all instances except for PASTA sauce (not spaghetti sauce). If i want a lighter tasting, less filling sauce, with just veggies in it for on top of some penne or tortellini, i’ll use puree. Otherwise paste is better in nearly all instances, in my opinion and my years of experience
Tomato paste is more of a paste and it is thick; it will not run all over the plate when you put a spoonfull on a plate. It taste much stronger than tomato puree.
Tomato puree is soupy and liquid like. When a spoonful is placed on a plate it spreads out and is runny.
I don’t use them interchangably.