TOMATO JUICE MADE IN YOUR KITCHEN

In my kitchen I like to prepare as much from scratch as possible, including juices. Orange and grapefruit are easy, just squeeze, and if the grapefruit is not very sweet, stir in a little sugar.

Tomato juice takes a little more effort. I like V8 juice a lot, and that’s what I aimed for in my effort to make tomato juice at home but I like it a little more spice, little more jazzy than the commercial version.

I scanned cookbooks checking tomato juice ingredient suggestions, and finally decided what seems like a good blend—at least to my taste. The base is tomato paste that I use a lot in my cooking. Anything left in a six-ounce can I scrape out, wrap in a plastic cling wrap, then place it in the freezer—when I need a little tomato paste, the frozen paste is easy to cut from. The kitchen tool is the blender.

I combine all ingredients in a blender and I have tomato juice in seconds.

Here is what I combine:

6 oz tomato paste

24 oz water

¾ tsp salt

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp lemon juice or vinegar

1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

½ tsp horseradish

⅛ tsp crushed chili

light sprinkling of smoke flavor (optional)