Tomato pudding? What to do with 64oz of tomato juice?
March 26, 2018 8:16 AM Subscribe
I rescued a lot of tomato juice from my giant can of diced tomatoes. What can I make with it that a) isn't a smoothie or soup b) can be eaten with a fork or spoon or sport?
Best answer: cook rice in it (instead of water.) Tomato rice.
posted by fingersandtoes at 8:26 AM on March 26, 2018 [7 favorites]
posted by fingersandtoes at 8:26 AM on March 26, 2018 [7 favorites]
well, first, make sure that the can it's from isn't BPA-lined if that's going to be an issue for you since the juice is mildly acidic
besides just plain rice, there's also paella. the juice also works well in anything that would require salsa/canned tomatoes anyway but aren't reliant on the tomato flavor - a batch of lentils or other beans, for example. a slow cooker or pressure cooker recipe might be good, too, since everything stews in the juice for a while (eg fajitas)
posted by runt at 8:36 AM on March 26, 2018 [1 favorite]
besides just plain rice, there's also paella. the juice also works well in anything that would require salsa/canned tomatoes anyway but aren't reliant on the tomato flavor - a batch of lentils or other beans, for example. a slow cooker or pressure cooker recipe might be good, too, since everything stews in the juice for a while (eg fajitas)
posted by runt at 8:36 AM on March 26, 2018 [1 favorite]
Tomato rice? I make it with equal quantities by volume of rice, tinned tomatoes & vegetable or chicken stock (plus a little oregano) and microwaving the whole thing together for as long as needed until the rice is the right texture to eat. It goes well with salads and you can make a lunchbox salad out of it by adding cucmbers, fresh tomatoes and whatever else you feel will go well (cheese/cooked meat/olives/sundried tomatoes etc). It'll be missing a little by not having the diced tomatoes in but not that much I think.
On preview what fingersandtoes said (more succinctly).
posted by *becca* at 8:39 AM on March 26, 2018
On preview what fingersandtoes said (more succinctly).
posted by *becca* at 8:39 AM on March 26, 2018
use it as cooking liquid in any other pasta sauce, soak it all up with nice bread, toast/bake the bread and use that for bruschetta/cheese on top etc.
posted by runincircles at 8:55 AM on March 26, 2018
posted by runincircles at 8:55 AM on March 26, 2018
What you've got is delicious flavor liquid and were I you (and had more freezer space than I currently do) I'd divide it into baggies and freeze to add to pretty much anything that needs to simmer or braise. Or I'd make a big batch of beef stew with the tomato juice as my primary liquid and freeze portions of that. But anyway you can totally freeze rescued tomato juice and use it in smaller portions if the amount is what's catching you off guard.
If you wanted to make a sauce for pasta you could reduce the liquid by like, half or more, let some fresh herbs and garlic simmer in it for a while, pluck those out and take off the heat and stir in some cream to get a yummy blush sauce, try it on small shells with green peas and a little pancetta crumble. Or over a braised chicken thigh with asparagus. The hard part is getting the juice to simmer but not scorch while it reduces, you have to be patient and keep an eye on it.
Morrocan-ish magical chickpeas = tomato liquid of some form + cumin, ginger, cinnamon, paprika, allspice, garlic, onion, salt and pepper + dried chickpeas ~ simmer until liquid is absorbed, if they get dry top off with water. Eat with gusto with good rice or on top of a salad of fresh herbs and cucumbers
posted by Mizu at 8:58 AM on March 26, 2018 [2 favorites]
If you wanted to make a sauce for pasta you could reduce the liquid by like, half or more, let some fresh herbs and garlic simmer in it for a while, pluck those out and take off the heat and stir in some cream to get a yummy blush sauce, try it on small shells with green peas and a little pancetta crumble. Or over a braised chicken thigh with asparagus. The hard part is getting the juice to simmer but not scorch while it reduces, you have to be patient and keep an eye on it.
Morrocan-ish magical chickpeas = tomato liquid of some form + cumin, ginger, cinnamon, paprika, allspice, garlic, onion, salt and pepper + dried chickpeas ~ simmer until liquid is absorbed, if they get dry top off with water. Eat with gusto with good rice or on top of a salad of fresh herbs and cucumbers
posted by Mizu at 8:58 AM on March 26, 2018 [2 favorites]
tomato gelatin? --> bloody mary jello shots?
posted by ArgentCorvid at 9:04 AM on March 26, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by ArgentCorvid at 9:04 AM on March 26, 2018 [2 favorites]
Tomato aspic, aka jello salad. (yuck. But you could)
posted by aimedwander at 9:25 AM on March 26, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by aimedwander at 9:25 AM on March 26, 2018 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Oh, you could also use the juice to cook cabbage rolls in.
Slice a bunch of onions. Prep your cabbage leaves, if they're tender you can peel them off raw but you can also wrap the head in a wet paper towel, microwave for like ten seconds, pull off leaves, repeat. Trim some of the stalks that are really thick and shred those trimmings plus the little interior leaves that aren't big enough to put filling in. Make your filling - ground beef or lamb, cooked rice, lots of parsley, paprika, garlic, maybe some maggi sauce, some diced mushrooms, maybe grated carrot... there are a thousand recipes for cabbage rolls and they are almost all good.
Put some of the shredded extra cabbage on the bottom of a big pot, then sprinkle a layer of sliced onion. Put a little scoop of filling in the bottom center of a cabbage leaf and roll it up like a burrito, place it seam-side-down onto the onions. Do a full layer of rolls and then do more cabbage, onion, rolls, until you're out of filling. If you have extra filling without the whole leaves you can make little meatballs and tuck into crevices. Top everything with any remaining onion and cabbage and add a bunch of paprika and salt and whatever other spices you like into this mess, and slowly fill with your tomato juice. You want to just cover the rolls - the onion and cabbage on top is to help keep the top level of rolls submerged. If you don't have enough juice, dilute with salted water or stock, but it shouldn't use all that much liquid because it should be pretty tightly packed. Bring to a boil, turn down to a simmer and let it bubble until everything is tender and cooked through. Take off the heat. Serve with sour cream and new potatoes.
posted by Mizu at 9:37 AM on March 26, 2018 [3 favorites]
Slice a bunch of onions. Prep your cabbage leaves, if they're tender you can peel them off raw but you can also wrap the head in a wet paper towel, microwave for like ten seconds, pull off leaves, repeat. Trim some of the stalks that are really thick and shred those trimmings plus the little interior leaves that aren't big enough to put filling in. Make your filling - ground beef or lamb, cooked rice, lots of parsley, paprika, garlic, maybe some maggi sauce, some diced mushrooms, maybe grated carrot... there are a thousand recipes for cabbage rolls and they are almost all good.
Put some of the shredded extra cabbage on the bottom of a big pot, then sprinkle a layer of sliced onion. Put a little scoop of filling in the bottom center of a cabbage leaf and roll it up like a burrito, place it seam-side-down onto the onions. Do a full layer of rolls and then do more cabbage, onion, rolls, until you're out of filling. If you have extra filling without the whole leaves you can make little meatballs and tuck into crevices. Top everything with any remaining onion and cabbage and add a bunch of paprika and salt and whatever other spices you like into this mess, and slowly fill with your tomato juice. You want to just cover the rolls - the onion and cabbage on top is to help keep the top level of rolls submerged. If you don't have enough juice, dilute with salted water or stock, but it shouldn't use all that much liquid because it should be pretty tightly packed. Bring to a boil, turn down to a simmer and let it bubble until everything is tender and cooked through. Take off the heat. Serve with sour cream and new potatoes.
posted by Mizu at 9:37 AM on March 26, 2018 [3 favorites]
Tomato juice is tasty on it's own, or you could add it to OJ. Or use it to replace broth or water in cooking. It freezes well, so if you don't have a use for it today, you can wait.
posted by theora55 at 10:28 AM on March 26, 2018
posted by theora55 at 10:28 AM on March 26, 2018
Response by poster: All very good answers!
How much can I dilute tomato juice and still keep a strong tomato flavor?
posted by tedious at 9:07 PM on March 26, 2018
How much can I dilute tomato juice and still keep a strong tomato flavor?
posted by tedious at 9:07 PM on March 26, 2018
Well I think that the juice from canned tomatoes needs to be cooked pretty thoroughly to get rid of any weird can-ny flavors so you also lose a lot of the kind of fresh vegetal taste that just juicing a bunch of romas would give you, but that's unavoidable. The flavor of a cooked tomato is pretty different from a fresh or just steam-peeled and canned tomato, so it depends on what you're going for. If you want a lot of cooked tomato flavor a great way to do that is to mix in some tomato paste - if you're aiming for frugality, you can also freeze leftovers of a can of tomato paste if you're only using a few teaspoons, or you can get one of those squeezy tubes. If you want the tomato juice to taste as uncooked as possible, that flavor is a lot more fragile and you'd have to dilute it a lot less to preserve the taste, especially if you're using it to flavor other things that already have a water content.
In my cabbage rolls I like to mix a can of tomato juice and a can of diced tomatoes and then top off with as much water as I need - the diced tomatoes give lots of concentrated bits of tomato flavor if the juice gets diluted too much. But it's also good without the diced tomato bits, just different. Tomato is one of those umami-rich things, it'll contribute a lot of tastiness without necessarily pinging as tomato if you use it like the liquid for rice or beans or as part of a more complex sauce - unless tomato is the main flavor you want, like in a marinara, I wouldn't worry about preserving the tomato flavor so much as getting an awesome well-rounded flavor over all. One way to do that is to use a yummy broth as the dilution liquid. If you want to do something vegetarian, mushroom broth plays really well with tomato juice.
posted by Mizu at 11:46 PM on March 26, 2018
In my cabbage rolls I like to mix a can of tomato juice and a can of diced tomatoes and then top off with as much water as I need - the diced tomatoes give lots of concentrated bits of tomato flavor if the juice gets diluted too much. But it's also good without the diced tomato bits, just different. Tomato is one of those umami-rich things, it'll contribute a lot of tastiness without necessarily pinging as tomato if you use it like the liquid for rice or beans or as part of a more complex sauce - unless tomato is the main flavor you want, like in a marinara, I wouldn't worry about preserving the tomato flavor so much as getting an awesome well-rounded flavor over all. One way to do that is to use a yummy broth as the dilution liquid. If you want to do something vegetarian, mushroom broth plays really well with tomato juice.
posted by Mizu at 11:46 PM on March 26, 2018
Please use that as a base to steam some mussels (I'd add garlic, onions, bay leaf, maybe some small-diced chorizo, a splash of dry vermouth or wine), and get lots of crusty bread to soak up the sauce!
I also saw a youtube video where (fresh) tomato juice was used in a margarita-style cocktail, which seemed intriguing.
You could use it as the liquid in some kind of braise too (osso bucco + red wine comes to mind), or a lentil stew (cook dried lentils in it, top with some chipotle powder or grind in some canned chipotle pepper in adobo sauce).
posted by miss_kitty_fantastico at 12:18 PM on March 29, 2018
I also saw a youtube video where (fresh) tomato juice was used in a margarita-style cocktail, which seemed intriguing.
You could use it as the liquid in some kind of braise too (osso bucco + red wine comes to mind), or a lentil stew (cook dried lentils in it, top with some chipotle powder or grind in some canned chipotle pepper in adobo sauce).
posted by miss_kitty_fantastico at 12:18 PM on March 29, 2018
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posted by mecran01 at 8:26 AM on March 26, 2018