Wayne Boatwright wrote:

> On Mon 12 Sep 2005 12:00:00p, ~patches~ wrote in rec.food.cooking:
>
>
>>Someone mentioned there used to be a couple of different kinds of
>>ketchup but now they could only find the Heinz style ketchup. I decided
>>to make ketchup today. I have several recipes. I noticed that each
>>recipe starts with tomato puree, chopped tomatoes, or tomato paste. I
>>also noticed each recipe uses a portion of whole spices with the
>>exception of one. The kinds of ground spices were fairly consistent
>>for each recipe. This got me thinking that playing with the spices can
>>vary the flavour somewhat. All the recipes had vinegar of some type in
>>them so even altering the type of vinegar would change the flavour. All
>>had some type of sugar so perhaps brown sugar would give a richer
>>flavour? All the recipes were straight forward and would be easy to do.
>> One recipe says it will keep for at least 8 months in the fridge. I
>>would imagine with the sugar and vinegar content this would hold true
>>for all of them. The nice thing about making your own is you can tinker
>>with the flavour and the consistency. There is a basic recipe for
>>ketchup at homecanning.com.
>>
>>I settled on one recipe then tweaked from there. You should smell my
>>kitchen! This one is going to be a keeper. I'm planning on canning it
>>up when it's finished reducing. Outside my backdoor a nice rosting pan
>>full of tomato paste is reducing as well. So even outside smells like
>>cooking tomatoes
>>
>
>
> I bet all of that really does smell good! Have you documented all the
> tinkering you've done in the course of making this batch that smells so
> good? I'm sure I'm not alone in wanting to know what you ended up with.
>
All tinkering was documented in the margine alongside the recipe. The
texture and colour are similar to Heinz. The flavour is richer with
deeper spice flavours. It isn't a *hot* spicey though. I ended up with
about 2 L of ketchup. I decided not to can it but rather store in the
fridge for the flavours to meld. I have another of the recipes I want
to try likely tomorrow. What I'm looking for is a zipped up ketchup
which is what I think the first attempt produced and a milder ketchup
similar to Heinz.