‘To Your Taste’ SCD Ketchup
‘To Your Taste’ SCD Ketchup
Main Ingredients:
1 kg tomatoes [ones with more flesh than liquid] [grated or chopped]
2 large onions [red, grated or chopped]
10 crushed garlic cloves
2 1″ pcs of ginger crushed
Optionally
2 bell peppers [preferably red, seeded & chopped]
2 red chili peppers [seeded & chopped] [to taste]
[A good paprika [3 or 4 tablespoons] can replace these two ingredients]
Ingredients to taste [see instructions below]
Vinegar [Apple Cider Vinegar]
Honey
Mustard
Cayenne, chilli & salt.
Steeping Spices:
Peppercorns, cloves, cinnamon, mustard seeds, dry herbs of your choice and
celery seed.
Instructions:
1] Put tomatoes, onions, garlic & ginger [and peppers if using] into a large
stainless steel or enameled utensil and bring to boil. Lower heat and simmer for
about 30 minutes to soften.
2] Remove from heat and let cool a little. Then puree in blender or food
processor. [If need be in batches & careful of letting steam escape if not
cooled sufficiently]. [Or can use hand blender].
3] Strain puree through a coarse sieve to remove skins and seeds. (You can dump
the puree into a colander and work it through with your hands until there is
nothing left in the colander but a dryish pulp of skins and seeds.)
4] Return the sieved puree to the heat and simmer to reduce. Cook and stir
occasionally over low heat until it is reduced by about a third and is
considerably thicker.
5] Meanwhile put peppercorns, cloves, cinnamon, mustard seeds, dry herbs of your
choice and celery seed into the vinegar [1/2 cup] in a small pot and simmer
covered for 1/2 hour to steep spices in the vinegar.
6] Pour about half the spiced vinegar through a tea strainer into the thickened
tomato mixture. Stir. Also add honey, mustard, cayenne, paprika and salt at this
point. Here is where the tasting comes in. You can adjust any of these
ingredients to suit you. You can add more spiced vinegar. Or a little plain
vinegar. More or less honey, mustard, cayenne, paprika. Just sort of tinker with
it. Cook it some more, stirring often, until it looks like catsup should look.
Taste and adjust again.
7] You may notice that it looks slightly curdled. Not to worry. Hit it a lick in
the food processor. Smooths right out. Pour into sterile jars leaving 1/8″ of
head space. Process in a boiling water bath 15 minutes. Or simply store in
refrigerator for a week or two.
This entry was posted on Saturday, August 8th, 2009 at 8:25 pm and is filed under Recipes & Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
