Simple and Easy Home Made Chilli Tomato Ketchup

by HOT JUAN on JANUARY 25, 2011 · 1 COMMENT

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Ketchup

Q. Why make your own Ketchup when there are so many in the shop and specialist suppliers these days.

A. Because it tastes even better when you make it yourself and you can modify it to your own tastes

I didn’t know as a kid that Ketchup was not just Heinz or Sainsburys (as that was our only local supermarket), over the years I have tried gourmet Ketchups on my travels, but they are never quite what I am looking for, the best ones to date has come from Mr Vikki’s and hisMax’s Ketchup which I loved.

So I have decided to start working on my own recipe, and what follows is now my base recipe for Hot Juan’s Ketchup.

Ingredients:

• 200 g Tomato Puree (1 tube)
• 250ml Cider Vinegar (I do live in Somerset)
• 100g Dark Brown Sugar (will make the Ketchup a much darker colour)
• 1 tbs Garlic Purée (crush your own, or buy a tube)
• 1 tsp Chilli Purée ( or 2-3 fresh chillies deseeded)
• 2 large Onions
• 1/4 tsp Allspice
• 2 tsp light Molasses or Honey (Molasses will make the Ketchup a much darker colour)
• 600 ml Water

The first thing we need to do is to tune the onions and chillies into a fine purée, I do this my finely chopping the onion and place it in my blender with the  de-seeded fresh chillies and about 100ml of the water.

Then add the onion/chilli purée to a thick bottomed pan with all the other ingredients and put on a low heat for a couple of hours, you will need to put a lid on it as it will spit and bubble, give it a stir every so often, once it is nice and smooth and thick, you can bottle it, make sure your bottle are clean and sterile and add the ketchup while it is still hot using a funnel.

You can modify this recipe adding some celery work well, but make sure you remove the strings, I have used a potato peeler to do this in the past, approx 5-6 sticks of celery to this volume of ketchup, what ever spices you like can be added, try just a little at first you can always add more and the base recipe already tastes very good.

Another great addition would be some smoky Chipotles, sock them well first after removing any seeds and the stem, remember to retain the water you soaked them in and use this as part of you ingredients.

Courtesy of Hot Juan as it appears that the ChileFoundry Website is closing down and I don't want to lose this recipe!