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Friday, May 4, 2012

Homemade Ketchup


I have to admit this is not a frugal recipe, at all. 
Especially if I use all organic ingredients. 
But sometimes frugality has to (if possible) take the back seat to nutrition and health and taste. 
It.just.does. 
Ketchup is more than a condiment to many people, I remember reading somewhere that the ketchup on the fries at McNasty was really the only thing worth eating. 
Well, that was obviously before we realized how horrible HFCS is for us. 
There is however some truth to that.
I have attempted ketchup in the past and it was always not quite right. 
Maybe it is because we have been using different organic ketchups for several years.
Maybe our palates are more refined and used to good foods.
Maybe, just maybe this is a delicious recipe - I am sure this is true!


Homemade Ketchup
  • 1 small onion, chopped 
  • 1/2 tsp cumin
  • 1/4 tsp ground cloves (you don't want whole)
  • 1/2 tsp powdered mustard 
  • pinch of cayenne pepper (if you want a little kick)
  • 1/2 tsp sea salt
  • 1  28 - ounce can diced tomatoes, drained
  • 1 (6-7ounce) can tomato paste
  • 2 TBS unsulphured blackstrap molasses 
  • 2 TBS honey - raw if you have it
  • 2 TBS apple cider vinegar (I uses unfiltered, raw) 
  • 1/2 cup liquid - water, chicken broth, or I used 1/4 cup of my tomato juice I drained from the diced tomatoes plus 1/4 cup water

Don't forget to be your own sous chef - mise en place really makes this go quickly. 

Chop your onions, drain your tomatoes, measure your spices. 

Heat a skillet over medium heat until hot. 

Add onion, the cumin, clove, powdered mustard, sea salt, and your 1/2 cup liquid and then saute until translucent and the water is mostly evaporated. 4-5 minutes or so. 

Remove from heat and add to a blender along with remaining ingredients. 

Blend until smooth. 

Pour ketchup into glass jars - this makes about 3 cups. 

I haven't tried this but I am sure it could be frozen. 



So, what about you? Do you make your own condiments? Do your kids know you do crazy stuff like make your own ketchup? Do they care? 


I am linking this to Mrs. Dull's Scratch Cookin' Tuesday

5 comments:

  1. This sounds good and though I don't use much ketchup, I will try it out! Thanks for sharing.

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  2. Thanks for sharing this with us over at Scratch Cookin' Tuesday! This looks very promising :-) I've been wanting to add making ketchup to my routines so I'm gathering recipes :-)

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  3. This looks good. I've never made ketchup before but am planning to try the fermented kind. If that doesn't pan out, I can always come back here. Thanks.

    For our salsa recipe, you wondered how to measure gallons. I thought I'd post my answer here for you.

    Oh, we’re so low-tech here, we just use gallon ice cream pails to measure and kind of guess at the halfway mark! LOL

    Since the recipe is very adjustable, that works for us.

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  4. Ok Annie - I knew it would be a DUH answer but have been racking my brain and couldn't get it! Thanks for stopping by and answering my question too!

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  5. If you don't want the actual spices in your food and you have stock (as you do), you could try popping the stock in the MW with the spices, bring to boil then 5 mins at 30%, or simmer 10 mins conventionally for the same time. This should extract the flavor and you then can discard the spices, lest they turn bitter over time (which they will, I actually ran an experiment, storing 'spent' spice in oil for a while and doing a tasting over time intervals *geekly blush*).

    And the recipe may be expensive(for some value thereof), but I think shop bought ketchup is full of refined sugars, so a lot of people who want to avoid them will probably find your version useful.

    ps.: you could also try 2-3 black cardamon kernels in the stock for 'gravitas'. Another nice touch is a very small pinch of 'black salt', which is the magic ingredient in Indian tamarind dipping sauce -- this goes well in tomato sauce of all kinds, I think of it as 'culinary fairy dust'.

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