Tomato ketchup is among the condiments that can enhance a simple snack into a delightful dish. It tastes great with fried potatoes, snacks like samosas, or with other fried items, such as sandwiches and cutlets. Even though it is very easy to buy commercially prepared ketchup, making it at home lets you adjust the sweetness, spice level, and ingredients.
The recipe for this homemade ketchup consists of fresh tomatoes, ginger, garlic, raisins, and red chilli peppers. The sauce comes out thick and red, with a perfect mixture of sweetness, sourness, and mild hotness. The great thing about this recipe is that raisins provide sweetness to the dish instead of sugar.
What Makes This Homemade Tomato Ketchup Unique?
Many commercial sauces use tomatoes in the process of preparation, but in this case, actually, the sauce contains fresh tomatoes, ginger and garlic, giving the dish its distinctive aroma, while the red chillies add some nice spicy flavor.
I would recommend choosing ripe, deep-red tomatoes because they provide better colour, flavour and consistency. The addition of raisins is also worth trying, especially if you prefer ketchup that is not excessively sweet.
Ingredients You Will Need
2.5 kg ripe tomatoes
15–16 medium garlic cloves
3 pieces of ginger, approximately 3 inches each
5–7 dried red chillies, deseeded and halved
½ cup golden raisins
½ cup apple cider vinegar or white vinegar
1 tablespoon food-grade rock salt
6–7 tablespoons raw or regular sugar
How to Prepare Tomato Ketchup at Home
Step 1: Prepare the tomatoes
Wash tomatoes well, take off their stems, and discard rotten parts. Cut them coarsely. Get a knuckle of ginger and 2-3 cloves of garlic. Get rid of the seeds from dry chillies and wash the raisins.
Step 2: Cooking the ingredients
Put the chopped tomatoes in the large pot. Put some ginger, garlic, raisins, dried red chillies, vinegar, salt, and sugar in the pot. Start stirring and cooking them on low or medium flame till tomatoes become tender; no water needs to be added.
Step 3: Make puree
When the tomatoes are cooked, let them stay on the flame for around 25-27 minutes, after which they are ready for blending.
Step 4: Strain the mixture
The next step is to strain the mixture through a thin strainer and, with the help of a spoon, remove all the chunks. This ensures there are no remnants of seeds, skin, or thick masses in the ketchup.
Step 5: Cook the ketchup to get thick
Place the mixture in a saucepan, and boil it over low heat for 30 to 40 minutes while stirring continuously. The cooking of ketchup has to be supervised instead of being timed. The sauce should become thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Remember that it will thicken further as it cools.
Step 6: Cool and store
Transfer the finished ketchup into clean, sterilised, dry, heat-safe glass containers. Cool it safely and refrigerate promptly. For longer storage, freeze suitable portions. Do not assume that sterilising a jar alone makes homemade ketchup safe for room-temperature storage.
Tips to Improve the Flavour
If you enjoy spicy sauces, you can adjust the number of dried chillies. For a milder taste, use fewer chillies and remove all their seeds. If the tomatoes are particularly sour, adjust the sweetness gradually rather than adding too much sugar at once.
Serving Suggestions
This homemade ketchup tastes good with French fries, vegetable rolls, samosas, as well as bread rolls, burgers and bread sandwiches. It can also be dipped with pakoras and can be used with other snacks as a great combination.
The main advantage I find in making ketchup at home is that I can modify its taste. You can make it sweeter, tangier, or slightly spicier depending on your preference. Once you try this fresh tomato-based version, it may become a useful addition to your homemade condiment collection.
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