PLEASE experiment and give me a report. Like I said, I saw a video where this guy uses his cherry tomatoes and we ALWAYS have lots of them, no loss if the recipe doesn't work.
I am thinking that many of the spices in most of the recipes are too much for ketchup. A little bit of GoogleFoo--
Heinz tomato ketchup's ingredients are: tomato concentrate from red ripe tomatoes, distilled vinegar, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, salt, spice, onion powder, and natural flavoring.
I think my recipe ingredients should be as follows:
Tomatoes, trying cherry tomatoes first
distilled vinegar
light brown sugar
salt, not much at my house
spice—still thinking about what spices, according to various recipes, but I think that they should be trace
onion, NOT onion powder
garlic, NOT garlic powder
natural flavoring—I think that falls into the “spices” catagory, BUT, I like using:
celery seed NOT celery salt, too much salt!
Mustard seed, bc who KNOWS how old the ground mustard is
1 single clove/batch is sufficient
I Don't think a cinnamon stick is going to add anything to this recipe.
When I use Ketchup/Catsup--don't care what you call it--I taste the tang of vinegar, but I DON'T taste hot pepper, like I do when I make salsa, OR cloves OR allspice OR cinnamon, so they should be a trace amount, or not at all. I also think that if I work at this, I should come up with a recipe that really brings out the tomatoes. As I have read, AND Colonial Williamsburg has experimented with, growing 18th century tomatoes, the first tomatoes in American gardens were specifically grown for sauces. They were mis-shapened dwarves that looked like very small heirlooms.
When we make stuffed peppers we use a quart of my canned tomatoes for filling up about 7 peppers. You can REALLY taste the tomatoes the onions, the meat and the cheese and without the tomatoes that taste like REAL tomatoes, it doesn't taste the same.
ALSO, I think that I will really need to watch while the sauce reduces, just like when I make a cherry pie filling bc the cornstarch has to thicken but not burn. UNfortunately, my crock pot is old. It only knows really hot and pretty hot, which is fine for prepping tomatoes/grapes/other fruit to keep it hot before putting in the jars for canning, but it often burns my food. Maybe, Christmas?!? Maybe not. I have asked for the largest chest freezer on the market to replace the really nice 3yo upright freezer that our local power company destroyed in a power surge.
I am hoping that my ketchup is Heavy on tomato taste.
Guess, we'll see.
Certainly this is a good topic for discussion.
We may ALL work on this recipe together!
