Ketchup!

I'm so excited! I made ketchup! One of our wedding presents was a book on canning. It had all kinds of recipes and instructions for making and canning almost anything. Perfect gift for a new farm wife. I spent the first couple of years of our marriage trying out the many recipes, but the recipes for dill pickles and ketchup were disappointing. I grew up on the store bought stuff and the recipes in the book were nothing like my kosher dills and store bought ketchup. The dills were soft and tasted weird and the ketchup tasted more like barbecue sauce than ketchup. I like barbecue sauce, but when I want ketchup, I want ketchup!

A few years ago, I was complaining on CCU that I had never found a recipe for ketchup that was like the store bought stuff. Cheryl posted a recipe that looked much simpler than any I had seen before so I saved it. Since then I either haven't had tomatoes or didn't want to take the time to try it out. 

Of course, when I went to find it on my computer, I couldn't come up with it, so I surfed the net to see what I could come up with. Almost every recipe said to start with tomato paste. I wanted to start with tomatoes, so I had to look up how to make tomato paste and combine the recipes. I also wanted to use honey so I made some adjustments. 

I'm not what I'd call a health food nut yet, but I am on my way :) Most of my adult life, food has been a matter of what we could afford. Now that the kids are out of the house and most of the debt is out of the way, I'm trying to learn how to cook with more natural stuff like honey, natural fats and sea salt. Next year, I plan to grow a lot of stevia and learn how to make all sorts of stuff with stevia.

Hope you can follow me here ... (this is how I cook) ... I took 4 gallon bags of tomatoes out of the freezer and peeled them. Then I cooked them down in the roaster with 1/2 cup of lemon juice, 1/2 cup of honey, 1tsp of sea salt, a cup of dried onions and a tsp of minced garlic. When they were the consistency of ketchup, I put them through the blender and did a taste test. It was still really tomato-ee so I added more honey, vinegar and sea salt. I think I ended up with another cup of honey, a cup and 1/2 of vinegar and a couple of tsps. of sea salt before it compared to the store bought stuff. I'd add a little of one thing, Taste it and then take a taste of the store bought stuff. Then I'd add a little of the next thing ... I think I got it pretty close :) Of course this made it really thin again, so I had to cook it down for a few more hours. Once it plopped like the store bought stuff I put it in jars. 

Did you know you can freeze ketchup? I didn't! I'll probably try that if these don't seal. Yes, I know, you are supposed to use jars with new lids. If I were doing this for someone else, or if this contained meat, I'd do that, but my MIL has been using used jars forever and rarely has one come unsealed. Us old country girls can be cheap!

One of my goals for 2012 is to start making all of my own condiments. Did you notice I said goals, not resolutions? Resolutions tend to set me up for failure, so I make goals ... and I don't just make them at New Years. I readjust my goals at least monthly and sometimes daily! 

What are your goals for 2012?

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue