Not the originally-conceived fish sauce stuff... but the good ol' Tomato stuff.
I love ketchup.
I'd say a... moderate... amount of love. I mean, I've seen people squirt Heinz processed ketchup into things like Chicken Soup or Kraft Dinner.
Myself, I'm a ketchup purist. I like it on two things, basically. Hamburgers and French Fries. That's it. Not onion rings, not hot dogs, not anything else.
For reals... Now, that said...(and perhaps the reason I get judged when people witness it) when I DO use it... I tend to use LOTS of it.
Gimme a bowl of fries and you'd best give me a bottle of ketchup. In terms of like "packets" of ketchup, I'd need about 6-8 of them for a small order of fries, I'd guess...
Anyway... that's all just to say... I love ketchup.
I think it gets a bad rap too. And many people think it is actually bad for you.
Why, I ask?
WHY?!?!?!
Freaking Ketchup Haters.
Well, haters gonna hate I guess.
But to them I just have to say: you know it's basically just tomatoes, vinegar, and sugar, right?
And it doesn't even have to have added sugar, if you are a discerning label-reader, or if you just make it at home yourself!
Make that bottle of ketchup organic and I daresay I might even call it 'good' for you! (Organic ketchup has been shown to have crazy times more lycopene content than inorganic...)
When tomatoes are cheap and plentiful here in Ontario in the fall, I might make a large batch of pure, organic, tomato ketchup, but what I wanted to show here was just a small little bit of gourmet ketchup I mixed up almost by accident.
Tee hee! Isn't that wittle bottle so cute!?
OK, so really what this was was some pulled pork sauce that I had extra, to which I added a bit of vinegar.
Boom! Ketchup!
Here's what the sauce was originally, in order of concentration: Roasted Tomatoes, Roasted Red Pepper, Roasted Onion, Garlic, Shallot, Mustard Seed, Oregano, Nutmeg, and Sea Salt.
If you're interested, check out my post from that epic and amazing pulled pork shoulder, to read more details on that amazing flavour cauldron of sauce.
So, that's what it was, and as such it was more like a BBQ sauce (as it should be for pulled pork).
But what I did to make it ketchup was just add vinegar. Plain white vinegar. I am as much a fan of flavoured vinegars as the next gourmand, but for some things you want the unadulterated versions.
I was able to get away without adding any sugar simply by having roasted all the veggies first. It actually works. I mean... don't confuse this as me saying it's sugar free... roasting vegetables brings forth some serious sugar, after all... I'm just saying I didn't add any extra.
:)
Then I funelled it into some containers.
Not doing this very often, I actually didn't really have a lot of appropriate vessels.
If I had made a large batch, I would have probably used one of my large weck pitchers, but this was just a fun little add-on batch... so who cares, right?
Interestingly enough, however, I DID have this cool little ketchup bottle on hand... I think the wife stole it from somewhere that offered house-made ketchups...?
And then I also used a small weck jar. Onto which I cleverly wrote the cunningly descriptive word: Ketchup! Lest I forget what is contained within.
:)
