Tomato Ketchup

by Allison Eckel

Our vegetable garden's mid-harvest tomato yield was huge, so I decided to get adventurous and try to make ketchup from scratch. My first resource was my trusted Joy of Cooking (by Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, and Ethan Becker). I have the 1997 edition, gifted to me by my mother-in-law, who discovered early in my life with her son that my skill in the kitchen was greatly lacking.

On page 69, I found a recipe for Tomato Ketchup, which includes an enticing description of the history of this condiment, as well as a disclaimer that it is historically more savory than its modern commercial counterpart. "OK, whatever," I think. "Let's make ketchup!"

The first ingredient is, of course, tomatoes, peeled and chopped. Fourteen pounds of tomatoes! Luckily, the variety we grew this year is large, knobby, ugly, and heavy, but 14 pounds is still a heck of a lot of tomatoes.The recipe offers no explanation of how to peel a tomato without it ending up in a gory mess, so I asked my cousin. He makes his own salsa. He recommended blanching, which is a process of boiling a vegetable for just a few seconds, then halting that heat with a cold-water bath.

From his explanation, each tomato was to be boiled, cooled, and peeled--in that order.So I arranged my stove-side work area with a pot of boiling water, a pot of icy water, a large pasta bowl to hold the peeled tomatoes, and a stock pot for the diced bits--all ringing a cutting board.

Was I supposed to dispose of the seeds and watery innards? I didn't know, because that's also not covered in the recipe. So I did for some, and got lazy with others. Before too long, I also added makeshift paper-towel dams along the edge of the countertop to stop tomato water from dripping onto my floor from the cutting board.

Two hours later, the tomatoes were ready and in the pot, along with eight sliced onions, and two diced red bell peppers. And I only cut one finger!

With the pot on to simmer, Step One was complete.

After dinner, the contents of the pot were soft, so it was on to Step Two. We broke out our new copy of The Sound of Music, popped some corn, and settled into our places: kids and Daddy in the family room, and Mom at the stove with her many pots and her new food mill. This way, I would have a good soundtrack for my labor.

For this step, I was to take the contents from the pot from chunky to smooth and watery, by pushing it through the food mill or a fine sieve. In the beginning, the food mill worked like a charm, and before long I had a ketchup-like watery liquid. But the parts that would not go through easily--most of the onion slices, actually--made for tough work. By the time the Nazis were chasing those adorable von Trapp kids through the streets of ....Salzburg...., I had about three cups of limp onion slices that just would not cooperate. And since it was after ..9:00 p.m..., I was losing steam and dedication, so those last bits of veg went into my compost bucket.

Note to self: Next time, consider finely dicing the onion and red pepper instead of slicing; the smaller, the better from the get-go, I think.

To the pot I added light brown sugar and dry mustard, then moved on to Step Three. Step Three was easy, and I found myself back at the stove to simmer, this time with a cheesecloth bundle of exotic-smelling spices. The concoction smelled more like mulled wine than anything one would pair with french fries. This second simmer allowed me time to help put the kids to bed, which was fortunate, because my three-year-old decided to put an extra struggle, since I had to shoo her out of the kitchen for most of the day. By the time I came down, the "reduction by half" was nearly complete.

Step Four was a breeze: Add cider vinegar and salt and red pepper flakes to taste; simmer another 10 minutes, and stir. Since I don't know how to can, I was to then let it cool before refrigerating. So my work complete, I removed the pot from the heat to cool, and finally sat my bottom down to relax and watch a little TV, and since it was after 11:00 p.m., I feel asleep on the couch. The ketchup finally made it into the fridge at ..5:30 a.m..., when I awoke and realized where I was.

At lunch, my husband and I tried the finished product. It tasted very vinegary. My first thought was of those extra veggies I discarded when I gave up on the food mill. Or, maybe I should have left all of the seeds and tomato guts in. Regardless, we added a white sugar, which is not in the recipe. The final, final product became a savory sauce with a consistency almost like cocktail sauce, but with a deeper brown-red color. It was really yummy on a burger and went nicely with a tuna steak we grilled for dinner.

After all that, I conclude that this is not a suitable replacement for the corn-syrup-laden ketchup my kids crave, but it is a nice condiment for turning pub food into more refined cuisine. And the cooks behind the Joy of Cooking would have me simply appreciate the process, since their title page quotes Shakespeare: "Joy's soul lies in the doing." Fine, but my soul craves a squeezable bottle of ketchup.