Weston 4-Piece Tomato Press & Sauce Maker Accessory Kit - Stainless Steel - Perfect for Homemade Pasta Sauce, Salsa & Canning

Have canned tomatoes the traditional way- blanching and skinning- and using this Weston tool. This tool is at least 10x faster and 100x easier. I just wash and core then purée through this tool. I can do so much more in a day. I let my mother in law borrow it and she called me to say she was shocked at how much easier and faster it is- and she’s been canning for decades!! Have only used it for tomatoes, it is dishwasher cleanable but I use a toothbrush to go over the screen. There are a couple small parts you need to be careful not to lose. It is easy to assemble- once you do it the first time.I use this for making sauce from my garden tomatoes. It works just as described and stands up to multiple large batches. Cleans up easily enough. And the hopper is good sized for such a small press. A couple of tips: the instructions say that you don't need to blanch the tomatoes first, but I'd recommend you do. It feels like the unit struggles somewhat with just raw tomatoes. I cut large tomatoes in quarters and blanch for 1 minute and transfer right to the hopper to cool a few minutes before processing. You do not need to peel or seed them first because this does a good job. The plastic parts do feel a little thin/light so not sure if it will last 50 years like grandma's did, but this is the first season I used it and it made a LOT of sauce just fine. Will update the review in a year or two if it doesn't hold up. I recommend.Sorry if this gets long, but I'm going to do a thorough review, address problems others have written of, and provide a few helpful hints, if I can.I'm 67, have been canning for almost 50 years. Being old-school, I've always blanched my tomatoes, peeled, cored, seeded with a sieve/pestle, spending hours at these chores and making a total mess of my kitchen. This appliance takes care of all that in one easy step.Assembly: Read the directions more than once and look at the diagrams. It's easy if you follow the directions and use a little intuition and common sense. Be sure you've attached the Screen correctly, and don't forget to tighten the Screen Thumbscrew. There's no hole to put it into; it's a pressure fit. Several people have complained about leakage. I didn't have any even the first time I used it. They may have forgotten to tighten the Screw or insert the Screen Gasket. That's important.Stabilize the appliance: You have options of Suction or C-clamp. I began with the Suction, and if you use that, remember to dampen the suction with a little water. It'll adhere better to your surface. I did have a little problem with the suction, but it's easy to reapply, even in mid-use. I was doing this on my kitchen table, so engaged the Suction and added the C-clamp, which won't mar your table top because it never touches it. The two together kept the appliance rock solid.Use: Fill the Hopper with your quartered tomatoes. It holds a lot, and use the Stomper to direction them down to the Spiral auger. Some reviews found the stomper flimsy. I think it's just right. Yes, it's plastic, but it lets you feel what you're doing. One review says the spiral auger (which is plastic) edges were becoming rough, and the reviewer was afraid of bits of plastic breaking off and going into the pot.Hint: You can feel it if the stomper comes in contact with the auger, which may have been the problem. Lift the stomper out and send more tomato down the hopper.Hint: The spiral auger forces the tomatoes against the screen, and as the screen holes are small to contain the seeds to be pushed into the waste bowl, the screen can become slightly clogged with tomato meat. This is a good thing! It means all that goodness is going where it should. If you feel the appliance is bogging down, reach your hand in and scrape the mash on the outside of the screen off and onto the Chute. You can't hurt yourself. The screen doesn't move.Everyone advises putting the skins/seeds in the waste bowl through the appliance again. I did so, but only one time through. What came out as waste the second time was almost dry.Cleanup: Not a problem. At least I didn't think so, as it didn't include wiping down walls!Hint: When you're through, keep turning the crank for a minute. There's still waste in the spiral auger, and you want to get as much as possible out before you disassemble the appliance. There'll still be stuff you have to clean out, but that's inevitable with any appliance. Rinse the pieces off and wash in soapy water.Observation: Some reviewers don't feel this would be dishwasher safe. I didn't try it, as my dishwasher was busy sterilizing jars. Personally, I feel it would be safe for the dishwasher. The metal frame only needs wiping off, but I wouldn't hesitate to put the plastic pieces on the top shelf of my dishwasher. If you're in doubt, take them out at the end of the wash cycle, before the dry cycle begins, but I don't think even that's necessary.A great many reviews consider the Waste Funnel to be flimsy. It is the most fragile of all the pieces, but I don't see that as a problem. Be gentle with it. It does go on and come off with a bit of difficulty. Don't drop it. If it does crack, or even break, I'm sure it's a low-cost replacement, or use some clear packing tape or even duct tape to fix it. After all, it doesn't have anything to do with the actual use of the appliance, which, I'm certain, could be used without it.Overall, I'm in love with this product! It does everything it's said to do, and is sturdy enough I'm fairly sure it'll last longer than I will.Last thought: I was a bit hesitant to buy this because of the price. I mean, for that price, how good could it be? Don't be discouraged by the low price. This is a quality appliance!Great timesaver, no longer have to peel tomatoes! Made blackberry syrup and strained amazingly fast and easy.These tools are great- easy to use and so easy to clean! So happy with this purchase!it was what i needed for my tomato juice works greatOther people's accounts of making gallons of apple sauce impressed me, they raved about how easy it was to process enough apples and tomatoes for the extended family in next to no time using the Roma strainer. I liked that the skins and rubbish came out separately, you didn't have to keep stopping and clearing out the debris the way you have to with the most common baby-food puree mill. Postage to New Zealand was a shocker but with buckets and basins of apples that would otherwise go to waste, and trees that would be producing even more in future years.... And the gadget looked good and solid. So I ordered one, just the basic model, no extras.I couldn't be more impressed! As with anything there was a bit of learning - cooking the apples just right so they were not too sloppy, not too hard. I put the skins through a second time, this time what came out was less liquid and more pulp. Just to see what would happen I put them through a third time and by then, when they came out into the "rejects" dish, they were down to such a small amount it was obvious that there was a huge saving compared with peeling and coring the fruit and then mashing it. Not that it matters when there is a lot of surplus fruit but for anyone who had to buy it and didn't want to have to throw away more than the bare minimum it might be worth considering.Out of pure curiosity I took a bag of raspberries, dating back a year or 3, out of the mystery-parcel section of the deep freezer and put them through. I hadn't bought the fine mesh seed strainer so would anything be strained out? Well, yes! The berries were not completely thawed when I impatiently started, so there was more waste than I had expected. Again I put it through a couple of times and ended up with a very seedy little pile of debris for the chickens and big bowl of mainly juice for me. It's now "Raspberry Jam for People with False Teeth" made with an equal volume of sugar, a sour apple cooked and mushed for its pectin and a small lemon's juice and the white pith scraped from the inside layer of the skin, also high in pectin because raspberry jam tends to be reluctant to set. There were a very few small seeds in the finished product, maybe five tiny specks per jar. Just enough to remind people with false teeth that life wasn't meant to be perfect. An interesting experiment.The apple puree I made so far has become fruit leather which takes up very little room.The Roma is not hard to clean, that's another good thing. You know how some gadgets are great but cleaning them afterwards is such a tedious job you end up not using them? This one is well designed, clean-up is quick. I gather from the company's material that parts are readily available. The plastic parts seem strong and made of good quality plastic but accidents do happen and it is reassuring to know that if one thing gets damaged it is not a matter of either throwing the whole thing out or having to send it away for expensive repairs, especially when one lives this far away!I am absolutely delighted with the Roma Food and Vege strainer and have no hesitation in recommending it.Plus points makes great Pasata; negative points fiddly to assemble/clean suction thing doesn't work on our wooden worktops but may on others clamp ok wonder how long some components might last(plastic waste funnel thing)... could be re engineered really well overall good for price compared with plasticky ones.....good bit of kitchen kit, It does all the work when making Red Pepper and Tomato soup.The only minor downside is the amount you have to scrape out at the end as it leaves a fair bit trapped.Apart from that it really is greatA bit fiddly to put together and dismantle, but it uses most of the tomatoes if you put them through several times. Despite being fiddly it's a much better option than skinning in boiling water, etc.I was pleasantly surprised to find a screen gasket was included with each of the three screens.I ordered both the Weston Roma Food Strainer, and the 4-Piece Accessory Kit on the 27th of April as I found tomatoes on sale at almost 90% off. The order was split since the items were in different warehouses. Each had problems. The Food Strainer arrived missing the screen. This was quickly replaced. The accessory kit did not arrive and Amazon cancelled my order. Luckily, I was able to re-order at the same price. This arrived on time. I say luckily, as the food strainer increased in price by almost 20% after I ordered it.I tried two methods of preparing the tomatoes for pressure canning. Quartering the tomatoes and running them through the strainer raw was difficult, and produced a separated water / pulp result. I ran everything through four times before the results were non longer worth while.Covering the bottom of a pan with quartered tomatoes, bringing it to a boil while crushing with a potato masher, then adding tomato quarters, maintaining the boil and continuing to crush, produced a non-separated product. It was much easier running the boiled result through the strainer. Twice through the strainer yielded more than four times through with raw tomatoes. I'm much happier with the results provided using this method.I'm looking forward to making salsa with the accessory screen once the tomatoes ripen in my garden.Life should be simple for a chilli head - eat chillis. Unfortunately I make "Whammo Hot Sauce" by the bucket load - a gallon of chopped chillis, tomatoes and vinegar cooked to a devilish brew, then the hot stew needs passing through a sieve to remove seeds and skins. That task is a killer. It's very messy, very difficult and very hot work! This machine was my attempt at an answer to my woes. I had also purchased the add-on screen set so set to work with the berry screen. The strainer fixed to the worktop firmly, the various bits assembled quickly and easily, and I filled the inlet with a couple of ladles of slurry and started to wind ... sure enough liquid started to drain through the mesh. As I wound the pressure built up and the pulp squashed ... at this point not much was happening but the wall got squirted! The shield/chute is a bit too open to enclose the screen completely (but does make removal and cleaning easy). A small piece of aluminium foil draped over it soon helped that and war commenced! A pint of brew went into the hopper - I expected leaks but there were none - so I wound that handle! Stuff disappeared down the chute rapidly with a bit of assistance from the 'plunger', the screen sieved and the waste ended up in a waste pot. I stopped using the ladle and poured the stuff straight from the preserving pan - the inlet hopper is big enough to avoid the chance of spillage. I spun the handle - no requirement for the electric motor attachment as the job is easy. The waste seemed a tiny bit wet so it got tipped back in and a little bit more pulp was extracted.Because I'm a tight git, I did that a couple of times to be sure but I'm not convinced it was necessary. Just to test, I tried to push some waste through a sieve and no significant pulp was produced. The whole task was finished in 15 minutes - it normally takes me 1-1.5 hours! Cleaning up was easy - the screen being the most difficult bit but a bottle brush dealt with that.All in all a great tool.