Homemade Fresh Tomato Ketchup
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| Homemade Fresh Tomato Ketchup |
| Prepared by Sarah Shilhavy, Photo by Jeremiah Shilhavy |
- 3 tablespoons coconut oil, or as needed
- 1/2 -1 white or yellow onion, roughly chopped
- 2-4 cloves garlic, peeled
- 1/4 teaspoon celery seed
- 1/2 teaspoon allspice
- 1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
- 3 whole cloves
- salt, to taste
- 2 lb tomatoes, quartered
- 3/4 cup coconut water vinegar
- 2 tablespoons honey
Melt coconut oil in a large saucepan and add onion
and garlic. Sauté lightly for about 20 seconds. Turn heat off and stir
in remaining ingredients.
Simmer over medium low to low heat until ketchup
becomes thick and reduces by half, approximately 2-4 hours. Stir every
once in awhile as needed.
Purée ketchup in a blender, and then strain through a
mesh strainer. If you wish, adjust seasoning to taste and if the
ketchup isn't at the thickness you want, return to the saucepan and
simmer until it's just the way you want it.
Cool, and then store in the refrigerator.
Don't let the long ingredient list fool you. This
recipe is actually very easy to make. I just got a little carried away
with the spices.
But really? Allspice? Cloves? Are we making pumpkin
pie? No, we're not. Trust me, they all work together. It doesn't taste
like ketchup made with pumpkin pie spice mix. It's really, really yummy.
You can give and take on the spices, if you want. But
if you have all the ingredients on hand, make it just as is first and
see if you like it. There isn't much of each spice, so they all work
together to create that ketchup flavor. If you think you can make it
better to suit your taste buds, go right ahead! Then let me know what
spices you did or didn't use, and how you liked it.
The aroma of the sauce as it simmered on the stove
was amazing, I kept coming back to taste it...and add salt. I'm not sure
how much salt I ended up using (I kept adding a little more at a time)
but just go by taste.
Since this uses all fresh tomatoes, it's a great way
to use up your summer crop if you're growing a garden this year. And
like I said, it's easy. Really. For real. It's one of those recipes that
pretty much does it's own thing and fills your house with nice smells
in the process.
Oh, and another cool thing about this recipe? It uses
honey as the sweetener (I used raw honey). I kid you not, my jaw
literally dropped to the floor when I saw how much sugar some of these
homemade ketchup recipes use. It really doesn't need that much. Just a
small amount of honey gave it a nice, sweet (but not too sweet!) flavor.
Yum.
And for all you visual (and non visual) learners, we
have a video for you today that will take you through the recipe step by
step.
Happy ketchup making!
SarahSource: http://www.freecoconutrecipes.com/index.cfm/2011/6/1/homemade-fresh-tomato-ketchup
