Heirloom Tomato Ketchup

This recipe for tomato ketchup comes from my Great Grandma Little. My mom and her siblings told me their grandmother would always have ketchup around. She would keep stored it in old coke bottles, and always have a bottle ready to pour onto freshly scrambled eggs.

Yes, ketchup on eggs. It’s divisive, I know. For one reason or another I like it, and tenuously say “it’s my heritage”?

I LOVED ketchup as a kid. I don’t think my mother knew this, but I always wore a special pair of red pants to McDonalds in case I spilled ketchup on myself. That way, my childhood logic concluded, I wouldn’t have to stop eating ketchup to clean myself up. Nobody would be able to tell, and I could continue unabated. Leave me to my ketchup, world!

The love runs in the family, but not from my Great-Grandmother, the ketchup maker. Apparently, the real ketchup lover was my Great-Grandfather, who also was the family gardener, and the person asking “Well, what are you gonna do with all these tomatoes, Mabel, HUH?”

This recipe is definitely a great way to take care of a tomato bounty. But it takes some time.

I don’t want to lie to you – ketchup is a LOT of work, and this recipe is no shortcut. It requires peeling, sieving, and standing over a hot stove making sure your precious product doesn’t scorch. I recommend a sturdy pot for sure, and a large sieve to make your life easier, though I did use a tiny little strainer, and heck, it worked. If for some wonderful reason you have a chinois or a tamis, pull it out of your “obscure tools drawer” – this is it’s time to shine.

To make this ketchup, I used heirloom tomatoes, because they were available to me at a good price, and are also delicious. It is not essential to the recipe to use heirloom tomatoes. I hung onto the name “heirloom” however, since this recipe itself is an heirloom of my family, whether or not the tomatoes are.

Heirloom Tomato Ketchup

Tomato Ketchup recipe, from scratch, using either heirloom or conventional varieties of tomatoes. This recipe yields a thick, tangy sauce that preserves well.

Yield: about 3 quarts of ketchup. It cans up very nicely in 24 four ounce jars.

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Equipment

• Large 1 gallon pot
• Large sieve
• Ladle
• Immersion Blender

Ingredients

  

• 14 pounds tomatoes, heirloom or conventional (this is a 1/4 bushel)
• 1 1/4 quarts white vinegar
• 5 1/4 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup salt (and more to taste)
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2 T paprika
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 1 tsp cayenne
• 1/2 tsp ground allspice

Instructions

 

• Wash tomatoes thoroughly. Bring large pot of water to boil.
• Once boiling, blanch each tomato for a few seconds. This will help loosen the skin, and make the tomatoes easier to peel.
• Peel skin off warm tomatoes.
• Once peeled, quarter each tomato. Pour out most of the hot water from the large pot, leaving about 2 cups of water in the pot. Placed quartered tomatoes back in pot with water, and boil about 5 minutes, until tomatoes are starting to break down. Be careful they don't scorch.
• Your tomatoes will be looking pretty mushy at this point. You can proceed without this step, but I recommend using an immersion blender in the pot and blend them until liquid.
  
• Set up a large sieve over a large container. Working in small batch with a ladle, put mixture into sieve, and push it through using the back of the ladle. Your goal here is to force through as much juice and pulp, but NOT the seeds. This will take a little bit of time, and depending on how large of a sieve and container you have, quite a few batches.
• Now! Once that's over with, all of the pulp and juice should go back in the pot. Discard seeds. Add vinegar, sugar, salt and chopped onion to pot, and cook until reduced to 3/4th of previous bulk. (If you'd like, you can immersion blend in the onion so the ketchup is entirely smooth.) Keep heat at a low, steady simmer and stir frequently to avoid scorching the mixture.
• Add rest of seasoning (see Note), and continue cooking until desired thickness, which is usually about 1/2 of what you started with. But, tomatoes can really vary, so it's best to do this by taste.
• Once finished, either cool ketchup in it's entirety, or keep mixture hot and ready jars for canning. Either way, go get some french fries – you deserve it.

Notes

My great-grandmother’s original recipe called for “French’s Ketchup Seasoning” – which I do not believe is any longer in production. I was able to track down the ingredients, and replicated them here with a few modifications (I took out the cinnamon because that didn’t appeal to me, and added coriander because it did.)

Feel free to follow suit and modify the seasoning as seems fit. It’s a huge batch of ketchup you’ll be eating for months, so make it how you like it. The ground clove & allspice are delicious, but if it’s important to you to have a bright red ketchup, you might want to leave them out. 

 

 

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