Claire and I made ketchup yesterday morning. We were almost out and frankly, there is a lot of corn syrup in commercial ketchup. I thought that instead of baking, something Claire loves to do, we'd try our hand at something she eats alot of. It is february and I don't have a garden right now. To make it truly local and sustainable, it would have to be July and I'd have to have a surplus of tomato plants. Since I usually only have 3 or 4 tomato plants, that doesn't usually happen. That bigger garden will have to wait until Eric retires from the Army. So, I did the next best thing; I bought a can of Wegmans Food You Feel Good About Tomato Puree and started with that. I had a hard time finding a recipe online. I finally found one on epicurious.com, but it needed quite a bit of tweeking. Still the whole process didn't take very long- maybe 20 minutes. The ketchup then sat and cooled while we headed off to the library.
RECIPE:
1 28-oz can of pureed whole tomatoes
1 medium onion, chopped
2 tbsp of olive oil
1 tbsp of tomato paste
2/3 cup of brown sugar (you can make it a little less, I didn't pack or level it)
1/4- 1/3 cup of cider vinegar
Spices:
about 1 1/2 tsp salt, all spice, dry mustard, celery seed, pepper (you can add more or less to taste... this is an approximate guess- Claire helped!)
1. Cook the chopped onions over medium heat in olive oil until soften (5-8 minutes)
2. Add the pureed tomatoes, tomato paste, cider vinegar, sugar and spices.
3. let everything simmer for about an hour. (less if you need to go somewhere, but longer will let the flavors develop. Don't forget to stir occasionally)
4. Turn the heat off and let it cool.
5. Blend. Either put several batches into a blender or if you have one, use an immersion blender.
You can refrigerate this for about 3 weeks. If you have more than you'll eat in that time and you don't want to give some to the neighbors, I suggest canning it. Since it is acidic, you can just buy a few small glass canning jars and lids, sterilize them (either boil them or have them go through the dishwasher) and then place them in boiling water for 15-20 minutes to seal them.
RECIPE:
1 28-oz can of pureed whole tomatoes
1 medium onion, chopped
2 tbsp of olive oil
1 tbsp of tomato paste
2/3 cup of brown sugar (you can make it a little less, I didn't pack or level it)
1/4- 1/3 cup of cider vinegar
Spices:
about 1 1/2 tsp salt, all spice, dry mustard, celery seed, pepper (you can add more or less to taste... this is an approximate guess- Claire helped!)
1. Cook the chopped onions over medium heat in olive oil until soften (5-8 minutes)
2. Add the pureed tomatoes, tomato paste, cider vinegar, sugar and spices.
3. let everything simmer for about an hour. (less if you need to go somewhere, but longer will let the flavors develop. Don't forget to stir occasionally)
4. Turn the heat off and let it cool.
5. Blend. Either put several batches into a blender or if you have one, use an immersion blender.
You can refrigerate this for about 3 weeks. If you have more than you'll eat in that time and you don't want to give some to the neighbors, I suggest canning it. Since it is acidic, you can just buy a few small glass canning jars and lids, sterilize them (either boil them or have them go through the dishwasher) and then place them in boiling water for 15-20 minutes to seal them.
1 comment:
An update: I just tried to make them again, but without dipping them in flour, egg and again in the flour. All I did was dip them in the oat flour once and then fry them in olive oil (canola oil has soy) and they turned out really well. I have to add, I made these with chicken breasts rather than ground turkey. Claire and Emma had to try them- it was only 10am!! If Lunch for snack? Now, they are EGG free as well... for those kids with Egg allergies.
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