Homemade Ketchup Recipe From Fresh Tomatoes – Never Use Store Bought Again!

Posted on August 22, 2014 by oldworldgarden in Cooking, Recipes // 2 Comments

Does anyone have a food mill in our neighborhood?  I would really like to try this this year.

Who doesn’t love ketchup?  In America, it is the most popular condiment found in households today. Adding it to burgers or dogs, using it as a dip for french fries and potato chips, and even adding it to your scrambled eggs is considered common practice.

simple and delicious home made kethcup

However, if you have every looked at a bottle of ketchup and sorted through a long list of unfamiliar ingredients, you would see that almost every brand has high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) added to it.

It might not always be as easy to see on the label because many times HFCS is also camouflaged as other ingredients: maize syrup, glucose, glucose-fructose syrup, tapioca syrup, dahlia syrup, fruit fructose, crystalline fructose, and isoglucose.

We place our ketchup in an old fashioned bottle and refill as needed.

So if you are trying to avoid adding (or unknowingly being added) HFCS to your diet consider – using those extra tomatoes to make your own ketchup!

We keep our ketchup in a standard squeeze bottle for everyday use in the refrigerator, replacing the contents from our canning pantry as needed.  No more high fructose corn syrup for us!!!

Homemade Ketchup Recipe

Ingredients:

18 lbs of paste tomatoes (or if using slicing tomatoes you will need about 25 lbs)

3 1/2 cups apple cider vinegar

3 tablespoons celery seed

1 cup chopped onions

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 teaspoon black pepper

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 cup brown sugar (or sugar substitute)

1/2 teaspoon dry mustard

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Instructions:

Freshly chopped tomatoes beginning to cook down on the stove

1. Wash, core, and cut tomatoes into approximately one inch squares. *No need to remove peels at this time

2. Place in a large stockpot and place on medium heat.  Heat until tomatoes simmer, stirring occasionally.

3. Add onions, garlic, pepper, cayenne pepper, sugar, dry mustard and cinnamon to the tomatoes.  Let simmer for 20-30 minutes.

Separate celery seed from vinegar before adding it to the tomato mixture

4. Place vinegar and celery seeds in a medium stockpot.  Bring to a boil and turn down to a simmer for 30 minutes while the tomatoes are simmering.

5. Place tomato mixture in the food mill to remove the skin and seeds.  Place remaining liquid in a 6 quart crock pot.  You may have extra liquid that you can add in later.

Place liquid in crockpot and reduce for several hours to the desired thickness

6. Strain the celery seeds out of the vinegar and mix 3 cups of vinegar into the crock pot with the tomato mixture.

Place ketchup in hot mason jars and process in a hot water bath.

7. If you have extra liquid(s), you will be able to add it to the crockpot as evaporation occurs.

8. Set crockpot on a low setting with the lid removed or vented.  Reduce by half – or to your desired thickness. (I let it sit overnight in the crockpot).  The time will vary depending on how hot your crockpot gets. We let ours thicken for 14 hours.

9. Pour hot ketchup into sterilized and hot half-pint canning jars. Add warm lid and seal with the band.  Process in a hot water bath, adjusting for altitude as needed, for 35 minutes for half-pints or pints, and 40 minutes for quarts.

Enjoy!