Under the Choko Tree By Nevin Sweeney

Pasta Sauce Makers - A Roadtest

Every summer for the past few years we have been buying a load of local tomatoes and spending a weekend making enough tomato pasta sauce to last the rest of the year, one or two days working making enough jars for us to have spag bol every week if we want to. The advantages to us are, local produce and reduced food miles, we know what goes in (tomatoes and nothing else), we use recycled glass jars, reduced trips to the supermarket and reduced cost.

During this time I have had the opportunity to try out three different styles of machine so I thought I would put down how I found them:



Type
:  “Fruit Press” manufactured by Porkert

Description: Made of tinned cast iron, this is a heavy duty unit that looks a bit like a meat mincer. The cooked tomato goes into the relatively small hopper in the top and you wind away at the drive handle which drives a screw that forces the tomato mulch against a screen (you get two screens, I use the finest) and the tomato sauce comes out the delivery chute while the waste travels along the machine and out the end.

Cost and availability: $60 about 5 years ago, bought in a specialty shop

Ease of Use: Reasonably easy, ladle the cooked tomato stuff in, turn the handle and away you go. There is a turn screw in the end where the waste comes out and it can be a bit of fun getting it set right, get it wrong  and either the machine backs up and stops working or too much waste comes out and your extraction rate goes down.

Extraction rate: High, if you get the set screw setting right all you get out the end is very dry seeds and skins, all the goodies go into your preserving jars.

Speed: Slowest of the bunch, make sure you allow plenty of time especially if you have lots to do.

Versatility: This will extract the pulp of any soft fruit. I used it to make a chilli paste that nearly took the top of my head off like a Frisbee, it was immediately christened “fire starter paste”. It really does concentrate the flavours.

Clean up: Reasonably easy, pull apart the machine and wash in hot water making sute to get every last bit of fruit out of the body and drive screw. Make sure it is dry before being put away or you can get rust on the bits that don’t have the tin coating.



Type: ‘Mouli” food mill

Description: This is the sort of thing we used to use to make baby food. It is a plastic shell with a handle that a screen fits into (you get three with the unit and again I use the finest) and a stainless steel scraper that is held onto the screen by a spring. You turn the handle and the scraper rotates, forcing the cooked tomato against the screen, pushing through the sauce and leaving the skin and seeds behind.

Cost and availability: $20 - $30 for the plastic body, more for stainless steel. I would probably go for stainless steel, it lasts longer and doesn’t get discoloured by the cooked tomato the way the white plastic does.

Ease of Use: Very Easy – dump in the tomatoes and turn. When you finish there will still be some tomato sticking to the bottom of the screen, but you can scrape it off with a teaspoon pretty easily.

Extraction rate: Medium - not as good as the above fruit press but still pretty good.

Speed: Medium – speed is middle of the range.

Versatility: Very versatile, it can reduce any cooked food to mulch quite quickly.

Clean up: Easy – wash up in the kitchen sink quickly and easily.



Type: “Tomato Squeezer” Manufactured by Gulliver

Description: This one is a somewhat larger machine with a hopper that sits on top of a rotating drum, as the drum rotates two spring loaded vanes force the tomato sauce through a screen (one size of screen only) and spits the skins and seeds onto a chute out the back of the machine, the tomato sauce is delivered down another chute at the front. It is made out of stainless still and feels a bit “tinny” but seems to do the job OK.

Cost and availability: Around $55 from a specialist cooking supply shop.

Ease of Use: Very easy, just slop in the cooked tomato to be processed and turn the handle.

Extraction rate: Not as good as the others, some tomato sauce is spat out with the skins and seeds, but the extraction rate can be improved by putting the waste skins and seeds back through the machine.

Speed: Verrry fast. If you have a lot to do this is the machine for you. A side benefit of the speed is that if you pack off and process the tomato sauce quickly, you lose less heat and so the boiler comes up to temperature more quickly, and you save on fuel.

Versatility: Not very. This is designed for processing tomatoes and that is it.

Clean up: A bit more hassle, being larger it takes a bit of hassling around to get it in the sink and there are some nooks and crannies that the tomato mulch can get caught up in which take time to clean out.

 

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