8 weeks of clean living

I really love ketchup, and I especially love eating it with homemade hash browns, but it’s a highly processed food so I haven’t been buying it. Today I finally got around to making my own ketchup, and it turned out great! The whole process is actually pretty simple and only takes two hours at the most. You need:

• 1 28 oz can of diced or crushed tomatoes
• 1 diced medium onion
• 4 minced cloves of garlic
• 1/3 cup of brown sugar
• 3/4 cup of apple cider vinegar
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp ground cayenne pepper
• 1 tbsp ground cumin
• 1 tbsp ground coriander

Sauté the onion in the olive oil in a medium pot until translucent, then add all remaining ingredients and let simmer on medium-low heat for about an hour stirring occasionally. Once the mixture has reduced almost completely (depending on how viscous you would like the final product), transfer the contents of the pot to a blender or food processor and process until the mixture is homogeneous. You can taste it at this point and adjust the seasoning–I prefer a less sweet, more spicy ketchup, and I’m also a cumin fiend, so the recipe above reflects that.

Other recipes suggest 1/2 cup sugar and less vinegar–just use what works for you. Along those lines, there are lots of other possible seasonings–cloves, cinnamon, allspice, celery seed, jalapeño, chili flakes, pepper, ginger–so you can make a ketchup that is very unique and specific to your tastes.

The recipe above should just about fill a 16 oz peanut butter jar. The results, with obligatory hash browns, are pictured below.