Making Tomato Paste

 Written by: Ferishta Sahak

Most land owners in Afghanistan are cultivating tomato along with other agricultural products for their daily use (consumption) and sell them in the markets or in the villages. As the life of tomato plant is so short, people could not keep tomatoes for a long time at home, they face  problems in term of keeping tomato.

Some villagers have found a solution for this problem. The writer/producer AEPO has talked to a woman, Karima Mirzad in Guldara, district of Kabul province.

Karima says:

From the beginning of August to the end of September we collect tomatoes from farms for our daily use, but at the beginning of October, when the weather gets cool, the tomatoes plants get dry and we collect all of the tomatoes from the farm. We separate the fresh and good tomatoes from the spoiled tomatoes. We wash the good tomatoes and then we pass them through a juicer or meat grinder. After that, we pass the paste through a mesh to separate the seeds from them and then we put them in a cloth sack(bag) to remove extra water from them and then we boil them in a large pot till they change into the paste. We add 5 spoonful salts in each 7 kilograms tomato during boiling to prevent them from spoiling. We leave the paste till it gets lukewarm and then we put them in jars and at the end, we add a spoonful of ghee in each jar for better protection. We keep the jars in a cold place and people could use the paste until the end of the winter.