A good friend of mine recently expressed a desire to make her own ketchup because her kids eat it all the time and she wanted to eliminate the last high-fructose-corn-syrup holdout in their diet. I mentioned that I had a good recipe but that it wasn’t online so I would have to type it up and send it to her.
Of course, every time I thought about needing to do this, I wasn’t at home or near the computer or didn’t have the window of time available to do this. Today, the stars and planets aligned and I actually remembered while I was at home and at the computer! I decided to post it as a blog entry, since I don’t think it’s online anywhere else that I’ve been able to find, although admittedly I haven’t tried searching for it online in a while.
I modified it since I didn’t have the time, energy, or safe resources to make it as written. My modifications are in the notations in parentheses with separate and much easier directions. 🙂
Homemade Ketchup
from the GAPS Diet cookbook “Internal Bliss”
Ingredients:
2lbs tomatoes, roughly chopped (I used 2 little cans of tomato paste and added some water to thin it out)
1/2 cup white vinegar (I used Bragg’s apple cider vinegar)
1 onion, chopped (I think I started with about 1 tsp of onion powder)
1 clove of garlic, crushed (I think I started with about 1 tsp of garlic powder)
1/4 cup honey
4 whole cloves (I know I used ground cloves, maybe 1/8-1/4 tsp?)
1 bay leaf
1 cinnamon stick (I think I used 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon)
1/4 tsp celery seeds (I think I used celery salt instead so I reduced the amount of salt later in the recipe)
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes (I think I used a pinch of cayenne instead)
1/4 tsp allspice
1 anaheim chile, chopped, optional (I didn’t have one so I left it out)
1 1/2 tsp salt (reduced, due to celery salt used above)
Original Directions:
1. In a small saucepan, combine vinegar, cloves, bay leaf, cinnamon, celery seeds, red pepper, and allpsice. Simmer on low heat for 30 minutes.
2. In a large skillet or wok, combine all remaining ingredients except honey. Cook on medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until onions and chilies are very soft, about 40 minutes.
3. Strain the vinegar mixture through a fine-mesh strainer and add the infused-vinegar to the tomatoes and stir.
4. Puree the tomato sauce in a blender until smooth. Strain the sauce through a fine-mesh strainer and return sauce to skillet.
5. Continue heating until the sauce is at desired thickness, about 2 hours.
6. When near completion, add the honey and stir until fully incorporated.
7. Taste and adjust salt, honey, and vinegar as desired.
MY Directions:
Throw everything except honey in a sauce pan and simmered for a little while. Add honey at the end and stir to mix. Taste and adjust.
Note — If you’re using ground spices like I did, then it should be pretty smooth in texture. If not, then you’ll have to strain in a fine mesh sieve, which I thought was too much work. 🙂
Enjoy!
scattered everywhere 