Ketchup is probably the condiment of the Gods. Lots of tomato taste, umami, acid from the vinegar, and sweetness from the sugar. It is absolutely a fabulous condiment for beef, eggs, potatoes, sausages, burgers, french fries, pasta, and rice. It’s a huge list. This the best recipe for homemade Heinz-style ketchup.
I have previously made my own (sugar-free) ketchup recipe, but this is just a fantastic recipe. This isn’t my own recipe, but I just thought it was so great that it is worth sharing. It was developed by Chefsteps, but everything you see and read in this article has been created by me. This is the ketchup I use when I make gourmet burgers and hotdogs at home.
Ketchup is known by many names. For example, catsup, ketsup, red sauce, and tomato sauce. The last two are commonly used in Great Britain.
No matter what it is called, it is delicious, and it is something that most people have in the cupboard. Like anything else great, it is worth doing it yourself.
If you are just here for the recipe, you can press the button underneath to be automagically transported to the recipe:
Why make your own ketchup when you can buy one that tastes fine in the supermarket? Well, I’ll turn the question upside down and say: why not?
When you make food from scratch, you know exactly what went into it. Many different things are put into factory-produced food to prolong its shelf life. Also, it is much cheaper to transport goods using a regular truck than using a refrigerated one.
When we make food at home, we don’t need to take those precautions. We can add the things that give us awesome taste and skip the rest.
The history of ketchup
The word ketchup stems from the Chinese word kê-tsiap. It’s the name of a sauce made with fermented fish. It is believed that the British first tried the sauce around the place of present-day Malaysia.
They brought this sauce back to the colonies in North America, where they tried to replicate it. They brought this version of the sauce with them back to England. From here, the recipe changed to contain mostly mushrooms or walnuts. Up through the eighteenth century, versions with tomato scraps became increasingly common.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, people became more and more nervous about preservatives, including the ones that were used in ketchup.
To solve that problem, two men named Harvey Wiley and Henry Heinz (yes, Heinz) created a recipe with only natural preservatives. It consisted of sun-ripened tomatoes (instead of scraps), which contain the natural preservative pectin, a fair bit of salt, and a much larger portion of vinegar than was previously used.
That means that the product is shelf-stable, even outside a refrigerator. I am sure a couple of bets were settled with that sentence.
What is the secret behind homemade Heinz-style ketchup?
It’s much easier to make your own version of Heinz ketchup, but you need to know a few key things that will help you get the right taste and mouthfeel:
You need a bit part of vinegar (and thus sugar) to get the right proportion of sweet to sour as you know it in your preferred ketchup
You need to put ground cloves into the ketchup. Not a lot, but it is an integral part of the taste
To get the right viscosity (which defines the way your ketchup flows), you have to put in xanthan gum.
Try this ketchup. It tastes fantastic and, honestly, I think it ticks all the right boxes when it comes to acid, taste, and texture, but still fresher and better than the one you know.
Please share on social media
This is my recipe for homemade Heinz-style ketchup. I hope you want to try it. If you make this recipe and post it on Instagram, please tag me as @foodgeek.dk so I can see it. That would make me very happy.
Ad links! The links for equipment and ingredients in this recipe are affiliate links, which means I will receive a commission if you purchase the product.
