Homemade Ketchup Recipe for Canning

Hot dogs, hamburgers, french fries, tater tots, some people even put it on scrambled eggs I’ve heard. Whatever you use ketchup for, and I am not here to judge, I imagine when you take that first bite, it just for a second, takes you back to your childhood. Well, maybe that’s just me, but when I taste ketchup I am reminded of cookouts as a kid. Family get togethers with the men around the charcoal grill and the women fussing over the side dishes, which were usually things like potato salad or cole slaw which I absolutely hated.

But once those hot dogs rolled off the grill, perfectly blackened and steaming hot, placed in the bun and just the perfect amount of ketchup was squeezed on…ahhhhh.

What I am realizing now, as an adult, is all the garbage that is added to my beloved ketchup (insert sad face here) that perhaps and hopefully wasn’t there when I was a kid in the stone-age or 80’s as I like to refer to my childhood. Have you checked out the ingredients on the ketchup bottle recently? Like many of the other condiments or anything else really these days, one of the main ingredients is, you guessed it, High Fructose Corn Syrup. Wah wah wah!

Luckily, I suppose, I am the only one in our home that eats ketchup so Eva (our 7 year old daughter) was not being exposed to the dreaded HFCS but I sure was, which certainly was not helping with my weight gain/loss struggle, was it? However, God blessed us with an abundant harvest of tomatoes so far this year so we figured, let’s try making our (my) own ketchup!

We had purchased some tomato seeds that ended up not being what they were labeled to be…it happens. Unfortunately, I had planted 10 plants before realizing this so we have ended up with a HUGE amount of what we believe to be Mr. Stripey tomatoes, a yellow tomato with red stripes. They are very good, don’t get me wrong, just not what we expected. Well, I don’t care what my ketchup looks like so we chose those as our test subjects. Spoiler alert…the ketchup ended up dark red anyway.

We chose to make the ketchup in crockpots rather than on the stove as stove space during garden season is a hot commodity. The crockpots worked perfectly. We started with two but were able to reduce down to one after 24 hours. It was a long process but so worth it and the end product is delicious, shelf stable, and no pesky HFCS! Take that Heinz! Below is the recipe with a few added notes as we went. Of course everything is to taste and can be added as needed. We followed the recipe as is and it actually turned out quite well.

Ingredients:

24 pounds of tomatoes (halved or quartered) *We ran ours through the food mill right away*
3 cups white vinegar
1 ½ cups brown sugar (more or less to taste)
1 ½ cups of water *We omitted due to running tomatoes through food mill and having excess liquid from tomato juice*
¼ cup of salt (adjust to taste)
1 ½ tsp onion powder (adjust to taste)
1 ½ tsp garlic powder (adjust to taste)

Instructions:

Add all ingredients to a crockpot(s) and cook for several hours.

2. Blend thoroughly with an immersion blender or run through a food mill. *SKIP THIS STEP IF ALREADY RUN THROUGH AT THE BEGINNING AS WE DID AND JUST KEEP ON COOKING*

3. Return your ketchup to the crockpot and cook on low until it reaches the desired consistency. *Ours took almost 36 hours total due to our tomatoes being very juicy. Next time I will remove liquid as they cook down to encourage quicker thickening*

4. Once the desired consistency is reached, ladle hot ketchup into sterilized mason jars (this recipe makes roughly 7 pints).

5. Remove air bubbles, wipe rims, affix lids and rings, and seal finger tight.

6. Process in hot water bath for 15 minutes.

Tada! Now you’ve got ready made, healthier, yummier ketchup your family and guests will all enjoy! So fire up the grill or the air fryer and invite some friends over. Light the bonfire and enjoy what is left of the summer or prepare to welcome in the fall but either way be confident in knowing you just took a step toward being a little more self-sufficient and eliminated a little more junk from your diet! You are awesome!

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