I suppose the first question someone would ask is: why?
I like to know the ingredients that are in my food, and looking at the label of a bottle of ketchup, there are quite a few ingredients I’m not thrilled with. Things like corn syrup and thickeners. So when I had an overabundance of tomatoes in my garden this year, and I made tons of tomato sauce, I thought it might be cool to make my own ketchup out of some of it. The results were pretty darn good.
If you don’t have your own garden-fresh tomatoes to work with, using canned tomatoes is just fine.
2 (28 oz.) cans peeled ground tomatoes (or 56 oz. fresh ground garden tomatoes)
3/4 cup distilled white vinegar
2/3 cup cane sugar
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon granulated onion
1/2 teaspoon granulated garlic
1/4 teaspoon finely ground black pepper
1/8 teaspoon celery salt
1/8 teaspoon mustard powder
1 whole clove
Combine all the ingredients in a large pot under high heat. Bring it to a boil, and as the ketchup starts to thicken, turn the heat down accordingly so you don’t burn the sugar.
It could take an hour–or more–for the ketchup to reach the thickness you like, but once you’ve achieved it, remove the pot from the heat and pour the ketchup into a blender and puree it until it’s smooth.
Let the ketchup cool completely, then taste it and add more salt and pepper, if needed.
The ketchup can be frozen in containers, or kept in the fridge. Try it in recipes for meatloaf, cocktail sauce, barbecue sauce–anywhere you’d use regular ketchup.
