Tomato Ketchup

So this all started when a neighbor gave me some fresh home grown tomatoes. The sight of those fresh tomatoes ripe and ready to be savored just brought back the childhood memories of my mom making the ketchup at home… the hard work… the aroma at home and how we use to finish it up much sooner than what it was intended to last!!

So here is what will make you a proud mommy – make the ketchup yourself!

This is recipe is for 2Kgs of tomatoes, please increase or decrease the ingredients as per the your tomato quantity.

Ingredients:

2 KG Tomatoes – the riper the better

1 Cup Sugar

½ tsp ginger powder

½ tsp black pepper

½ tsp salt

½ tsp vinegar

 The Method:

Chop the tomatoes in 4-5 pieces each & throw them in a thick bottom pan. Stir occasionally. You would need the gas to be on high for the first 10 mins. You can keep these covered while they cook. After 10 mins reduce the gas to medium and stir more often. If you have one of those mashing spoons – feel free to squish the tomatoes as much as you comfortably can.

The best part of this recipe is that it doesn’t need you to constantly attend to it.

After about 20 mins of cooking, remove the tomatoes from the gas stove. Let it cool down. Then throw them in any regular grinder that you have and grind to make a good puree.

Pour the puree through a strainer mixing well with a spoon. This would help you to get the pulp and the sauce separated. Once you have the sauce separated pour it in to a clean pan and let it boil. When it gets to a boil add sugar, ginger powder, black pepper & salt.

Let it boil some more, ideally till you reduce the sauce to 3/4^th of the quantity. Then remove it from the stove. When it has cooled down a little bit add the vinegar.

Let it cool entirely, preferably save it in a glass jar – would live longer.

Enjoy it! – with almost anything J