Ketchup

[Fabula]

Thought I would share my experience of making ketchup.

First time I made it, I got loads of tomatoes, chopped them and boiled them up and spent ages passing them through a sieve to get a nice tomato liquid with loads of flavour.
This costs quite a bit, and is a right pain. So after that first attempt, I have used passata (sieved tomatoes) that you can buy easily and saves you all that work.


What you need:
A few packets of passata
Sugar
Spiced vinegar or any tasty vinegar apart from balsamic
Spices

Put the passata into a large pan.
Add about 1oz of sugar (light brown is good) for every lb of passata.
Add around 25ml of the vinegar for each pond of passata.
Add some spices if not using spiced vinegar: White pepper, garlic, cayenne, salt and paprika, all powdered.
Stir, heat and reduce for a while.
The ketchup is ready about 5 min after it has reduced enough to start bubbling blobs out of the pan.

You can vary the amounts of vinegar and sugar, and the spices to suit your taste.

Bottle in empty, clean, sterilised old ketchup or similar bottles.
Keeps fine in the cupboard for at least 6 months, but I would put it in the fridge to be safe.


It is far tastier than Heinz ketchup, and costs slightly less.
Made it loads of times, and it is very popular at barbeques etc.

If you want to make spiced vinegar, get a bottle of normal malt vinegar, add whole spices to it, and leave for 6 months or so. I would put in a stick of cinnimon, a clove of garlic, some peppercorns, some allspice, some star anise etc.

[Zak33]

nice work bud.

hows the consistency? thick and gloppy, or wetter that the market leader?

i'd also suggest trying tinned toms as they are so cheap, though lots of reducing might be needed.

[redlight]

Good one.
A little variation if you want it for barbecues.
Subsitute the sugar for golden syrup and add some of that hot pepper sauce you get in the tiny bottles.

[Fabula]

nice work bud.

hows the consistency? thick and gloppy, or wetter that the market leader?

i'd also suggest trying tinned toms as they are so cheap, though lots of reducing might be needed.

Consistancy is similar to the market leader, but is easy to vary by chosing how much you reduce it by.

Tinned tomatoes would work well, but with passata (which you can buy a 500ml carton for maybe 30p) you get a very smooth ketchup. Just not quite as smooth as bought ketchup.

[Moby-Dick]

Sounds good - I'm going to be making chilli sauce this year ( if my chilli crop is as good as hoped ! ) so am looking ad different base sauces.

[Butcher]

What's the best way to sterilise bottles?

[Moby-Dick]

For Beer - you can use Milton Tablets ?

[0iD]

Another BBQ variation is to add honey, teriyaki & a little yellow or black bean paste. Sweet & sticky

[RavenNight]

I do enjoy ad-libbing with Ketchup, just get some bog standard 'Market Leader' and add some honey, a little mustard and some insane sauce ('Who Dares Burns' works nicely) and pour over anything, fantastic for BBQ steak.