Tomato Ketchup
Who doesn’t know or love Ketchup? A household staple for many and something I grew up with, having it with every bbq, burgers & fries, and many other delicious deep fried Dutch treats (like bitterballen 🤤 – which are not bitter at all). Like a lot of you, I’m sure you have your favourite sauce and condiments too. Ketchup is one of mine (I think Mayonnaise will win though, always), and what better way – to use excess or those last ripe tomatoes from summer – than making your very own Ketchup!
This recipe can easily be doubled or halved, adjusting to how much tomato you’ve got on hand.
I made double this recipe – so 2 kilo tomatoes this time – which yielded 9x jars of 300g of ketchup (totalling in 2.7kg of finished, smooth sauce), as well as a jar of dried tomato skin powder (along with onion and celery bits).
Tomato varieties used in this recipe are;
(links open a new tab)
Barry’s Crazy cherry
Black Strawberry
Blue Beauty
Bosque Blue Bumblebee
Brad’s Atomic Grape
Cream Sausage
Cuor Di Bue
Red Pear
Reisetomate
Every tomato variety has different flavours and colours, thus making mine not the standard colour and flavour.
Ingredients
1kg fresh tomatoes
chopped or halved, chunky cores removed
2 onions
white, chopped
150g celery sticks
washed & chopped
3 tbsp tomato puree
trust the process
1 tsp cayenne pepper powder
1 tsp cinnamon powder
1 tsp coriander powder
100ml red wine vinegar
50g brown cane sugar
olive oil
small splash
salt & pepper
to taste
Directions
1. Heat a little olive oil in a large pot/pan.
2. Cut the tomatoes, remove any hard cores of bigger tomatoes. Cut cherry tomatoes in half or quarter if larger
3. Cut the onion and celery into coarse pieces
4. Chuck all vegetables into the pot and fry the tomatoes, onion and celery on a high heat until the tomatoes start to break down and start to cook
5. After a few minutes, add the spices, sugar, tomato paste and vinegar and simmer over low heat for at least 10 minutes – longer is better, until all the vegetables are soft. If necessary, add a splash of water
6. Puree with a hand blender until smooth and season with salt and pepper to taste*
7. Sterilise plenty of lidded jars or even bottles
8. Fill each jar with a little space left at the top
9. Wipe some kitchen paper with distilled vinegar along the edge of the jar before the lid goes on and screw the lid on tightly
10. Fill your sink with enough boiling hot water to cover the jars and place them in the water, this will help seal them
*Now this is pure preference, for a super smooth, no bits ketchup it is worth going the extra mile and sieve the sauce
You can dehydrate the bits of skin and seeds in either a dehydrator or oven on a low temperature for long. Prepare dehydrator tray/baking sheet with baking paper
a. Over a large bowl/pan hang a fine sieve and scoop small batches of sauce. Pressing it through with the back of a spoon or spatula helps you get the most smooth bits of sauce into the bowl/pan
b. Continue with step 7
c. Scoop out the bits of skin & seeds that remain in the sieve onto your prepared trays and spread out evenly
d. Dehydrate until all moisture has been removed
e. Once fully dehydrated, blitz in a food processor or nutribullet thing. Store in an airtight container and use in soups, sauces and even in burger meat!
