ID Mommy Kitchen Tip: Freeze your Tomato Paste

Here's a little trick that just dawned on me to try the other week.  Not sure why it took me so long to think of this, but here it is in case you haven't thought of it either...

I've found that most of my recipes that call for tomato paste only require a Tablespoon or two.  While the cans are pretty small, I still find myself wasting a lot of left-over paste after I open a can.

So here's what I did.

I used the one tablespoon needed for the recipe I was making.  Then, I put a piece of plastic wrap on a plastic food container lid.  I measured 1 Tbsp portions and dropped them on the plastic wrap, then stuck the whole thing in the freezer.

Then, just label a plastic bag, and once they are frozen, dump them into one bag in your freezer.

Now you have pre-measured tomato paste ready to go when you need it, without the waste! I count 8 Tablespoons in this bag....that's probably 4-8 meal's worth that I would have tossed out in the past.  Which isn't a ton, but when you think about what I used to do in using a whole can for every recipe, well, I'm buying one can instead of up to 8 cans!