Homemade Alternatives - Homemade Ketchup Recipes

How to Make Homemade Ketchup 

As you poured that famous Heinz Ketchup on your fries, did you even wonder what it would be like to learn how to make homemade ketchup? Could you actually reproduce that age old tomato sauce made famous by Heinz. We all love that rich tomatoey ( is that a word?) sugary concoction on all kinds of foods - just like Heinz has encouraged us to do over the years. Personally, I usually use it only on fries, but now that I've come up with a delicious homemade alternative to the original ketchup, I use it on many more things. The homemade ketchup I make is just the right balance to serve as a flavorful sauce on and in all kinds of dishes - casseroles, sandwiches, meats (if you eat meat), and many other uses. The wonderful thing about a sauce like ketchup is that you can use your imagination - put it on anything you like. I know many people who like ketchup on their eggs. I'm not one of those, but for those who love that additional flavor, this is the perfect solution.

So now, we get to the reason why I'm always on the lookout for homemade alternatives to the sugary, chemical-laden, processed foods that are all over the supermarket shelves these days. I don't want all that processed sugar and all those chemicals - those additives and preservatives that you find in so many foods - in my body. I'm trying to be healthy. And the answer to eating healthier is to eat organic. And to cook from scratch in your own kitchen where you have control over what goes into your food. That's why I make my own mayonnaise (click here for recipe). That's why I make my own bread (recipe coming soon). And there are many other foods that I'm going to be in search of to make in my own kitchen. And remember, your own kitchen is the best controlled cooking environment you can find.

Nutritional Information for Heinz Ketchup

Have you ever wondered about the nutritional information for Heinz Ketchup? Do you read the labels on the foods you buy? I suggest you do! If everybody read the labels on everything they bought, I believe the amount of processed food bought from the supermarkets would decrease considerably. Food manufacturers, unfortunately, don't care about what you put into your bodies. They only care about profit. So to turn the tide on this trend, you need to read your labels. 

Here's a good example of a Nutrition Facts label, this one being for Heinz Ketchup. Check out the ingredients! It's made from tomato concentrate. Distilled vinegar is good. But then, we come to the sugar element. Look at that: "high fructose corn syrup", followed by more corn syrup. That's a whole lot of sugar - and that's processed sugar, containing corn syrup that's probably manufactured using GMOs. For more information on Heinz and GMOs, click here.
It's clear from that article that there are probably GMOs in Heinz Ketchup, but that whole discussion on GMOs is for another day. Right now, we just want to focus on getting healthy ingredients into our food. So if you want to eliminate the risk of GMOs in your food, then don't buy the products that may contain them.

Homemade Ketchup: How to Make Ketchup

So if you can't wait to get down to business (or fun, if you prefer), let's teach you how to make ketchup. You can find pretty well any recipe you want on the Internet. I found this one at Whole New Mom. For the original recipe for Easy Homemade Ketchup, click here. Now, the joy of finding and using recipes from the Internet is that you can make them your own. It's been said that you use a recipe once, then you change it to suit your own likes and dislikes. Substitution is a big word in my kitchen. If I don't have what's called for in the recipe, then I substitute what I do have. And if I don't know of a suitable substitute off the top of my head, then I look it up on the Internet. You can probably see the trend here - I use the Internet to find out anything I don't know myself. I believe it was Napoleon Hill who suggested that you surround yourself with people who know what you don't know. And that would include just about anybody on the Internet. But I digress.

Here's my recipe for a healthy Homemade Ketchup, as it ended up with my substitutions, additions and subtractions:

Easy Homemade Ketchup

Makes approximately 1 1/2 cups 

Ingredients

1 6-oz can tomato paste
2 Tablespoons apple cider vinegar
2 Tablespoons demerara sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt
3/4 teaspoon garlic powder

1 1/2 teaspoons onion powder 

3/8 teaspoon allspice

1 Tablespoon molasses 

1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

2/3 cup distilled water 

2 Tablespoons Chia seeds

Method

1. Place all ingredients in a blender.

2. Blend completely.

3. Store in the refrigerator.

And there you have it. It's that easy! This particular recipe I found to have an almost BBQ sauce taste, which is fine with me because I love BBQ sauce. But, again, that's the joy of working with recipes - you can add or subtract most of the ingredients to suit your personal taste. For instance, I added the Chia seeds because they help to thicken the sauce, as I found it a bit runny for ketchup. And Chia seeds are very healthy! 

And here's my ketchup, sitting in the fridge alongside my Homemade Mayonnaise.

I selected this particular recipe for homemade ketchup from a number of healthy recipes. I was just trying to find out how to make ketchup - without all the sugar and chemicals and additives. Since I made the ketchup recipe above, I've found another one that comes even closer to the original. The recipe above is, as I mentioned more like a homemade BBQ sauce which, I believe, gives it a much wider range of uses in all your favorite foods. But I'm always looking for a better way - that's just my nature. And here's what I found:

Homemade Ketchup Recipe

Ingredients:
Two 6 0z cans of Muir Glen Organic Tomato Paste (or you can use regular)
1 cup Bragg Apple Cider Vinegar Organic Raw  
2/3 cup water (I used my homemade stock)
2 tablespoons demerara sugar 
4 tablespoons minced onions
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons sea salt (I used Himalayan Pink Salt)
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Preparation:
Blend together in food processor until smooth, about 1 minute.

Put in small saucepan and heat on medium heat for about 5 minutes, stirring often. *I stirred constantly because that keeps the boiling bubbles from popping up at you - messy and painful! 

Let cool, then keep refrigerated.

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Cooking time: 5 minutes

Yield: about 3 cups 

Voila! What could be simpler...and healthier! I made a few adjustments to the original recipe, which you can find here. I switched to the organic apple cider. I've always been a fan of Bragg's - good natural foods you can trust. If you want to stay true to the no-sugar thing, you can use what the original recipe called for, which was Stevia Original Liquid Extract. I don't use Stevia; my personal preference is Truvia Calorie Free Sweetener, but Stevia is good, too. And if you're concerned about demerara sugar being the same as brown sugar, don't worry - it's not as refined as white sugar and it retains it's natural sweetness and goodness from pure sugar cane. 

So, as you can see, it doesn't take a whole lot of work to put together this homemade ketchup recipe. You can learn how to make ketchup in your own kitchen in just 10-15 minutes. And since ketchup is so widely used in America these days, wouldn't it make sense to follow the trend of making healthy recipes and make your own homemade ketchup? And once you get into the swing of it, making healthy recipes can do wonders for your overall health, even if you're challenged with some of the more life-threatening diseases. If you want to get healthy, remember, it's all about diet - not drugs!  

So make your kitchen the source of some wonderfully healthy homemade alternatives. Make your kitchen a healthy kitchen. Make your food healthy food...and you'll end up with healthy bodies - for you and all your loved ones!

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