• Tomato purée: processing and production machinery

| Using Thor, you can achieve very high quality purées thanks to the low process temperature that the evaporator allows you to maintain and its precise Brix control.

Product quality and excellence with no steam consumption.

Tomato purée (or passata) is a highly versatile food, and one of the base ingredients in many “made in Italy” recipes, as well as many others, from pasta sauces to the basic condiments for pizzas, as well as being used in various meat-based main courses or vegetarian dishes. It is made exclusively from fresh tomatoes, and only high-quality, whole products are used, not waste from other processes, such as peeled tomatoes, which are instead recovered in the production of concentrates.

Tomato purée can be defined as the juice or pulp of concentrated tomatoes without skin or seeds and is the result of a cold or hot extraction method whose resulting raw material is then thickened in evaporators.

Carefully selecting the tomatoes used in the production of passata is crucial, as it can affect the quality and durability of the finished product. The selection criteria include ripeness and the absence of imperfections and defects. Deep red, ripe tomatoes with a higher TSS (total soluble solids) and pulp create a better quality product. The pectin content and colouration are two equally important parameters.

How is tomato purée produced?


After washing and sorting, to select the most suitable products the tomatoes undergo an enzymatic deactivation treatment which employs heat to block the activity of the pectolytic enzymes responsible for oxidation.

Inactivation, as far as the purée is concerned, is preferably done with the Hot Break method, which allows the temperature required for the process (even higher than 90 °C in the case of tomatoes) to be reached faster and highly consistently, in terms of both Bostwick and Blotter.

At this point the chopped tomatoes with their skins and seeds still attached are placed in special turbo-extractors to separate the waste and obtain a juice substantially free of solids. The juice is then reduced in vacuum evaporators to remove excess water and the process continues until the mass is reduced to the desired density, where the end point is determined by measuring the total soluble solid content (in degrees Brix).

The characteristics of tomato purée

For a product to be called 'tomato purée', it must be obtained directly from fresh, healthy, ripe vegetables. To maintain the colour, aroma and taste of the tomatoes, the juice must be concentrated to 5 - 12 degrees Brix. The purée can be mixed with edible salt, acidity correctors, spices, herbs and aromatic plants, and its skin and seed content must be less than 4% by weight of the finished product, as specified in the Italian Ministerial Decree dated 17 February 2006.

| Evaporation systems for high quality tomato purée


Ing. A. Rossi tomato purée technology enables the customer to comply with all legal requirements, in terms of permitted concentration, purity, additional ingredients, safe processing and packaging, and the optimal preservation of the organoleptic characteristics of the raw ingredients.


The advent of tomato pre-concentrators

The evaporation solutions developed by Ing. A. Rossi include a wide range of products, from forced circulation to descending film. Systems of both types differ mainly in capacity and their use of original energy efficiency solutions, depending on the version. Ing. A. Rossi Group falling film evaporators stand out for their exclusive design which integrates a number of different processes into a single insulated body, rather than delegating them to different columns.

Alongside these evaporation systems for tomato purée, the engineers have developed a unique technology: Thor - Hybrid Flow. It is the most advanced and energy efficient solution on the market and achieves very precise concentrations which are significantly higher (up to 12 Bx Hot Break and 16 Bx Cold Break) than any other falling film eavaporator. This means that certain finished products, such as tomato purée, can also be produced simply by using this dedicated pre-concentration technology.

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