This Simple Trick Will Get All Your Tomato Paste Out Of The Can

There's no denying that canned tomato paste is something you want to have in your kitchen all the time. Whether it be for a homemade pasta sauce, or used to add richness to a stew, tomato paste is a make-or-break ingredient. But as great as tomato paste is for your cooking, it sure is stubborn when it comes to actually removing it from the can.

You could use a spatula, opt for a spoon, or perhaps you've even resorted to filling up the empty can with water and shaking it up to remove the excess stuck to the edges. But there's a much easier approach. In a 30-second TikTok video that has unsurprisingly gone viral since it was posted, user @lauralibgirl demonstrates just how she does it. She simply removes both the top and the bottom of the can with a can opener. She then pops the top off, flips the can over, and nudges the tomato paste with the end of a utensil, letting gravity do the rest of the work.

Watch any cooking show and you'll never see celebrity chefs using tomato paste directly out of the can. Most likely due to the fact that it's inconvenient and unsightly to remove, the tomato paste is either pre-measured or squeezed from a tube. While many have switched over to the tubed variety for this very reason, it's also a more expensive option. According to My Recipes, canned tomato paste averages at $0.69, while the tube is typically priced at around $2.

If you're using tubed tomato paste simply because it's easier than scooping it out of the can, you're better off just grabbing your can opener. The one caveat to the TikTok hack is that because you're opening the cans on both sides, you can't exactly put the leftover tomato paste in the can. That said, My Recipes suggests portioning it by the tablespoon and freezing it for future recipes. But no matter how much tomato paste you use, at least you know you'll never have trouble getting it out of the can in the first place.