Achiote paste: A unique Mexican flavour, but if it dries to a brick, is very difficult to break back down to a paste.
The paste bar had dried to a hard brick. Here are the solutions I tried:
- Mortar and pestle: Did not even dent the brick. Noisy and completely ineffective
- Soak in oil: marginal breakdown on the edges. I tried soaking overnight. ineffective
- Hammer: did not dent it
- Microplane grater: too hard, did not even dent it
- Small blender: ineffective. It just bounced around. I was afraid it would damage the blender
- Cut with a sharp 8″ chef’s knife: difficult and somewhat dangerous, but somewhat effective. I had to use a lot of force to hammer down on the knife. I was, eventually, able to cut the large block into 4 pieces.
- Two flat pieces of metal, squeezed together with a C-clamp: Put the block within a piece of plastic wrap, between two flat pieces of metal. Bent the metal.
- C-clamp: Put paste block within plastic wrap. It did squish down but not enough for me to make it crumble. At least it moved
- 1 ton arbor press: This was effective. Put the block within a piece of plastic wrap. This crushed the paste block very easily into a thin layer that I was able to crumble.
One ton arbor press used to squish dried achiote paste block, in order to flake it down and use it as a spice. This was difficult.
I have a much smaller block (about 50g) I was trying to break down last night when I came across this post – and I started to get very worried hearing I might need a 1 ton arbor press :D
I soaked my 50g block in the juice of 2 limes for 15 minutes, and this turned the lime juice pink, but was still like a rock (my little block is about 4 years old..) I dried the block off, and there was a little bit of softening around the edges – I could stick a metal spoon into it and make a dent in it, but not cut through it. I found at this point though I could grate it using the smallish side of my box grater – not the parmesan side, but the medium size holes… I was able to grate most of the block except for the end nub, and then I was able to finely carve up the nub with a chefs knife. Make no mistake, it wasn’t easy!
Then all ingredients into a vitamix for a minute (lime and orange juice, with garlic and salt) and my achiote paste was ready to use!
I was trying similar methods when I came across your site. Even a 6″ bench vise barely cracked it as I had no immediate access to a 1 ton. However, I stuck it in the microwave for about 15 seconds…whammy…softens up…
[Don: I think I did try the microwave, but maybe not long enough. Maybe my block was so dried out that there was little moisture inside. It is a good tip though.
Thanks]