Humans are creatures of routine & habit. Even those of us who consider ourselves to be spontaneous and adventurous have a bit of stability and routine in our daily lives. Alarm clocks. Showers. Toothbrushes. Coffee. Tea. Breakfast. Salt shakers. Condiments. Condiments?
Yes, there are those of us who habitually reach for the (soy) milk for our coffee, the jam for our toast, the mustard for our sandwich, and ketchup for our fries. Boyfriend and I make a lot of things that require ketchup – burgers / veggie burgers, homemade french fries, omelettes, etc. And, habitually, every time Boyfriend and I would cook one of these dishes, we would have some variation of the following conversation:
GF: “We should make our own ketchup.”
BF: “It’s probably not that hard….”
GF: “Like, what do you need? Tomatoes? Vinegar? Sugar?”
BF: “What are the ingredients on the bottle….?”
Have you ever looked at the ingredients & nutrition facts on your Heinz bottle of ketchup? You might not want to. When corn syrup is listed twice in two different varieties, you know it’s trouble. Fast forward to a lazy Saturday. While watching Giada work some magic in her beach-view kitchen, I noticed that she was making her own ketchup!!! Is there anything this woman can’t do? Needless to say, I was officially inspired.
Never one to copy, we allowed her recipe to serve as a foundation and we went from there. She had some interesting techniques- namely, the idea to leave an onion mostly intact whilst in the pot, for flavoring, and the addition of a cinnamon stick. So feel free to give this a try, but in fair warning- much like our tomato sauce recipe, once you try this, you may never want to buy the bottled kind again….
Enjoy, friends…and say goodbye to jarred sauce forever.
