Tomato Ketchup recipe 2
Homemade tomato sauce made with fresh ripe tomatoes, raisins and dry red chilies from scratch.
Servings: 1 litre tomato ketchup
Ingredients (1 cup = 250 ml)
- 5 kg tomatoes or approx. 5.4 lbs tomatoes
- 3 to 4 grams garlic – 15 to 16 medium garlic cloves (lahsun)
- 3 to 4 grams ginger – 3 pieces of about 3-inch ginger (adrak)
- 5 to 7 dry red chilies (sookhi lal mirch) – deseeded and halved
- ½ cup golden raisins (kishmish)
- ½ cup apple cider vinegar or white vinegar
- 1 tablespoon rock salt
- 6 to 7 tablespoon organic unrefined cane sugar or regular sugar
- ¼ teaspoon sodium benzoate dissolved in 1 teaspoon hot water
Method
Preparation for tomato sauce
- Rinse the tomatoes well in water.
- Slice the top eye parts of the tomatoes. Roughly chop the tomatoes.
- Discard spotted parts or peels.
- Peel and rinse the garlic, ginger. Later roughly chop them.
- Halve and deseed the dry red chilies.
- Rinse the raisins and keep aside.
Making tomato sauce
- In a huge pot or casserole or a 4 to 5 litre pressure cooker, take all the chopped tomatoes.
- Add the ginger, garlic, red chilies, raisins, vinegar, salt and sugar.
- Mix well and keep the pot or cooker on a low to medium flame on the stove top.
- Keep on stirring at intervals.
- When the tomatoes soften, switch off the fire. The softening takes about 25 to 27 minutes.
- When the mixture is slightly hot or warm, blend the puree with an immersion blender or in a regular blender. If using a regular blender, then don’t add too much of the tomato mixture.
- Make a smooth puree.
- With a strainer which is not very fine, strain the puree very well directly into a pot or a large sauce pan.
- Strain very well.
- Keep the pot or pan with the strained tomato pulp on the stove top,
- On a low to medium flame, simmer the pulp till it starts thickening and reaches a ketchup like consistency. Takes about 35 to 40 minutes.
- Heat 1 tsp of water in a small bowl. Add 1/4 tsp of sodium benzoate to the hot water.
- Stir and dissolve the sodium benzoate. The preservative should be dissolved in the water.
- Pour the sodium benzoate solution to the hot tomato ketchup. Stir very well.
- Pour the hot tomato sauce in a sterilised glass container. (See sterilisation method below) Close tightly with the lid.
- Let the tomato sauce cool and be kept aside for some hours or a day. Then keep tomato sauce in the refrigerator and use after 1 or 2 days.
- Serve tomato sauce with any snack or appetizer.
Sterilising the Glass Container
- First rinse the jar. In a large sauce pan heat water till it reaches its boiling point… Meaning it has begun to boil.
- Immerse the jar and its lid in the hot water. Continue to boil the water along with jar for 8 to 10 minutes.
- Remove the jar with the help of clean tongs and place the jar inverted on a thick towel kept on the kitchen table top. Let the jar dry naturally.