Tomato Ketchup

Homemade Tomato Ketchup

Everyone loves ketchup, Heinz Ketchup in particular. But it’s loaded with so much sugar that making your own homemade ketchup has to be a better alternative.

There are many recipes for homemade tomato ketchup but I find this one the best. I love it because you sweeten the tomatoes not with oodles of sugar but with ripe plums.

It certainly passes the ‘Stopa kids’ taste test but I have to warn you, I do have to put it in a glass jar labeled Heinz. Yes, my son will consume it happily from any bottle or jar but my daughter, who is all about branding and awareness these days, won’t eat it if she doesn’t think it’s Heinz. She hasn’t quite worked out that the colour, consistency or taste is completely different than Heinz nevertheless as many parents do, I just deal with it. My favourite trick your child story recently is where one parent called pea and mint soup, ‘Incredible Hulk Soup’. The changing of the name made all the difference to the willingness of the children to consume it. So in my case, I haven’t changed the name just the delivery receptacle. I’ll do anything to make them eat healthier.

Because as Malcolm Gladwell once explained, Heinz doesn’t just taste good, or even great. It tastes objectively perfect: When Heinz moved to ripe tomatoes and increased the percentage of tomato solids, he made ketchup, first and foremost, a potent source of umami. (19 Aug 2014)

Credit: This recipe is from the TM31 Fast & Easy. Now long out of stock but still one of my favourite Thermomix books