Homemade Ketchup

Yes, I made homemade tomato ketchup!
I have to say, that for years we've joked about it. I've heard more than just a couple people say that their moms made homemade ketchup once when they were kids. And they made a bit of an 'icky face' when they said it. LOL And, if you've ever watched the "Vacation" movies with Chevy Chase as Clark Griswold, there's the scene where they are having a picnic with Cousin Eddie & his family. Ed is fixing hamburger helper (on the grill!) without any hamburger, & Ed's daughter Vicki is stirring the cool-aid with her hands. Trying to be polite, yet showing a bit of sarcasm, Clark fixes his "hamburger" & as he dips a thick red substance from a jar he says, "Reeeal tomato ketchup Ed?" LOL!

I found a recipe & I thought I'd just try making it once. It's a small recipe (& I even halved it so it would be smaller), so I figured it wouldn't be too much work or too many tomatoes wasted if we didn't like it. But, if we did like it, well, great!
I found this recipe here.
It's a nice link that tells about canning tomatoes. It's also where I got one of my spaghetti sauce recipes, but that's for another day...or two.

Tomato Ketchup
24 pounds ripe tomatoes
3 cups chopped onions
3/4 teaspoon ground red pepper (cayenne)
3 cups cider vinegar (5 percent)
4 teaspoons whole cloves
3 sticks cinnamon, crushed
1 1/2 teaspoon whole allspice
3 Tablespoons celery seeds
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 cup salt

Yields 6 to 7 pints

Wash tomatoes. Dip in boiling water for 30 to 60 seconds or until skins split. Dip in cold water. Slip off skins and remove cores.
Quarter tomatoes into 4-gallon stock pot or a large kettle. Add onions and red pepper. Bring to boil and simmer 20 minutes, uncovered. Cover, turn off heat, and let stand for 20 minutes.
Combine spices in a spice bag and add to vinegar in a 2-quart saucepan. Bring to boil. Remove spice bag and combine vinegar and tomato mixture. Boil about 30 minutes. Put boiled mixture through a food mill or sieve. Return to pot. Add sugar and salt, boil gently, and stir frequently until volume is reduced by one-half or until mixture rounds up on spoon without separation. Fill pint jars, leaving 1/8-inch headspace. Adjust lids and process.

I processed mine in a hot water bath canner for 15 minutes.
Also, I really wasn't sure how I felt about using so many tomatoes for this in case we didn't like it, so I halved the recipe. My yeild was 5 pints.

Here is a picture of the juice. This is after you have cooked the tomatoes & have added the vinegar that has been seasoned & then run it through your colonder or food mill, so it's actually ketchup flavored juice.

And here it is after it has cooked down by half. It took me a few hours of simmering to get it to cook down by half & become thick enough. I couldn't get a good picture because of the steam.
My 5 pints are in my new water bath canner in this next picture. One of my very best friends sent this to me. I actually have no idea which one sent it, but I do know that it was 1 of 8 lovely ladies that have been my very best friends for years. Or maybe all of them sent it! Thank you ladies!

(There's some jars of tomato juice next to my stove that I hadn't found storage space for yet. And behind those jars sits my jars of my dried herbs. )

I forgot to take a picture of all my pints of ketchup until we had already opened one, it's the one in the middle with a different lid.

And here's a close-up. See, it does really look like real ketchup.

Oh! I forgot to mention this, & it's really important!

We really like it!

The first time our daughter tried it, she dipped a french fry into some. I watched her with intent anticipation. As she ate, I said, "Well????"

And she paused, took another bite, & then said, "It tastes like....ketchup."

To which I threw my arms above my head & yelled, "YAY!"

LOL

So, I am glad I made this ketchup. Since I halved the recipe, I only used about 12 pounds of tomatoes. It does take a lot to cook down to get 5 pints. But, it tastes good, so it was worth it.

Now while eating supper somebody just has to say, " Reeeeal tomato ketchup?"

LOL

Tomatoes

This is what I am doing today:

Today I'm making 2 different recipes for spaghetti sauce. I've never canned spaghetti sauce before, so this is new to me. I have enough tomatoes here that I'm sure I'll be canning some more juice today too. One recipe calls for 4 gallons of tomatoes, so that's why I have some tomatoes in that 5 gallon bucket. That was the best way I could figure to measure 4 gallons of tomatoes.
Last night I made 5 pints of ketchup. I have never done that either. I wanted to try it. We'll see how it tastes in a day or two. If it's good I'll post the recipe.
And I'll post about today's spaghetti sauce too.
The house smells AMAZING.

Sorry I haven't been on here much, I'll try to do better! :)

Wordless Wednesday on Saturday--TOMATOES!

Pizza Sauce & Favorite Canning jars

Here is the pizza sauce I canned the other night (I mean the other morning! LOL)

Again, I got this recipe from Tammy's Recipes. Here is the link to Tammy's Pizza Sauce.

I used her recipe for the seasonings, but I did go a little different route as far as the technique for making the sauce.

I just couldn't bring myself to drain the juice off the cooked tomatoes. That tomato juice is just so flavorful! I did some searching on the net, & most recipes for tomato sauce call for you to cook the juice down to a sauce instead of draining the juice. So that's what I did. It took forever, but I felt good about not draining the juice. :)

I have no idea how many pounds of tomatoes I had. Earlier in the day I had made the tomato soup, so this was the other half of the tomatoes that wouldn't fit in all the big pans I made soup in! I had my big 16 quart pan about half full of tomatoes, & my two 8 quart pans full.

1. Cook tomatoes with about 3 or 4 onions, diced; 5 or 6 cloves of garlic, minced; & 2 or 3 bell peppers, diced, for about an hour, or until everything is tender.

2. Run them through a colondar or food mill to remove seeds & skin.

3. Return to pans & season.

Season with:

1/2 cup white sugar

2 tablespoons salt

5 teaspoons oregano

2 teaspoons black pepper

2 teaspoons basil

You can adjust these measurements acording to how many tomatoes or how much juice you have. I had a lot, so I did add more.

4. Cook down 1/3 for a thinner sauce or cook down 1/2 for a thicker sauce.

5. Process in pint jars.

This took me a long time to get it to cook down, maybe a few hours! But it was so worth it! The house smelled wonderful too.

The next day, our 17 year old daughter wanted to dip her cheese stick into some of this sauce, so we opened our first jar. It was a big hit! :) And, for lunch that day I made some little tortilla pizzas with it. It was very good!

Thanks for another great recipe Tammy!

I also wanted to show you some of my favorite canning jars. In the picture above, that is a pint jar with a picture of a grandmother on it. I think it is so neat! It is a Mason pint jar.

And then here is a close up of some of my tomato soup jars. The one on the right is one of the older blue Ball jars. It's a wide mouth blue jar & it just seems so heavy & strong. I know the blue Ball jars are strong. The other day I was putting my half gallon blue Ball jars back up on top of my high cabinets when I realized it wasn't safe to use them for canning. I was STANGING on the counter & I DROPPED a half gallon blue Ball jar from up there. I knew it would shatter in 1000 pieces when it hit the floor. It BOUNCED! Can you believe that?!

That jar on the left of the blue Bell jar is one of my favorites. It has a square pattern all over it, like a grid. I have no idea who made it. It doesn't say Ball or Kerr or Longlife anywhere one it. I have had it for at least 20 years. Actually, there are 2 or 3 of them & I have no idea where I got them & who made them. They are just so different that I think they are really cool.

Here's where I dropped the half gallon blue Bell jar from! I'll never forget seeing that big glass jar BOUNCE!And here's a little pint jar that I like. I don't know if you can see it, but just like 90 percent of the stuff produced in 1976, it has the Liberty Bell on it & 1776-1976. LOL I am filling it with corriander seeds that I'm slooooowly harvesting off my dried cilantro plants.

I know I have other jars that are fun & different, but they are ALL put away. I actually had to go buy some NEW jars last weekend. I haven't bought new jars in ages. I'd so much rather find a big box of them at a garage sale rather than pay so much for brand new ones!

Thanks again, Tammy, for the Pizza Sauce recipe!

Canning more tomato juice...

Canning is still going on at our house.
This is what my kitchen looked like when I went to bed on Labor Day:

Yep, more tomato juice! And I went to bed with a dirty canner on the stove! LOL
It was our 3rd big pickin' & canning of tomato juice. I didn't take a picture of the bags on the table, because it looked like the same picture from last time, again. LOL
Only this pickin' we got more for some reason (it usually starts tapering off) & we got 51 more quarts of juice. We FINALLY got them all put away, most of this load is now in boxes in one of our closets, thanks to my dh for doing that! Our tomato plants have really produced tremendously this year. Thank you Lord!
So this is just ONE of the reasons I've not been on this computer very much lately.

I have so much more I can post about the preserving that's been going on around here. I have also been freezing stuff too. I have shown you the corn, but I've also frozen diced (& also thin slices) green peppers, & also freezer slaw. And now for the first time I am drying stuff because of the herb garden. I have some pictures of the camomile I am picking almost daily & drying.
Also some other herbs...but that's for another day.

I'm off to BED!

Cherry Tomatoes

We have a nice crop on cherry tomatoes this year. We just have one plant & we get plenty of tomatoes from it. They are so flavorful & sweet.
Here are a few tomatoes with some basil & chives from the herb garden.
I added a splash of olive oil & it made a nice basil tomato salad.

Truth be told, as much as I LOVED this little salad, these tomatoes are so sweet & delicious it's almost a sin to add anything to them. LOL
We usually just pick them, wash them, & eat them. :)

Basil Tomato Salad
Cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
a few basil leaves, chopped
a few chives, chopped
olive oil, just a drizzle
dash of salt

Add all ingredients together, stir & chill.

MORE Tomatoes! Homemade V8 Juice

I know that looks like the same picture from last week, but it's not. It's from Wednesday. My dh picked tomatoes right at dawn to avoid the heat, & he got another 11 bags! We canned 35 more quarts of tomato juice. I think we'll have one more big load to pick & can in about a week, & then the tomato canning will be done for the summer.
I had to take a picture of our daughter holding this tomato before I cut it up.

They day before we canned the second round of tomato juice, I picked one bag of tomatoes & canned a batch of Spicy V8 juice. I found the recipe on line after following links at Simply Recipes. Here is the link to the recipe. I changed just a few things. I added 1 large green pepper, a few sweet banana peppers, & some fresh herbs. Spicy V8 Juice

8 quarts water

4 pounds homegrown tomatoes, chopped

1 bunch celery, chopped

8 green jalapeno peppers, chopped

1 cup vinegar

3 bay leaves

2 Tbs oregano

1 large onion, chopped

1 head garlic, pressed

4 Tbs salt

4 Tbs sugar

In a large pot, combine all ingredients except the sugar, bring to a boil, and cook at a steady boil for 2 hours.
Remove from heat and strain through a colonder or food mill, making sure to express all the liquid you can.
Discard the pulp, return the liquid to the pot, and boil for another couple of hours, or until the liquid is reduced to roughly three quarts. Add four tablespoons of sugar, remove from heat, stir, and let cool.

I added:

another pound of tomatoes

1 green pepper

5 sweet banana peppers

a small handful of flat leaf parsley

about 10 basil leaves, rolled & chopped

5 or 6 sprigs of thyme

3 sage leaves

And one more thing. I did NOT let it cook down to about 3 quarts. It would have been way way way too thick. I had been worried about all of that water it called for (EIGHT QUARTS!!!). I never add water to my regular tomato jucie, so this much water was kind of freakin' me out. LOL That is why I did add about 4 or 5 more tomatoes (about another pound). I did cook the whole pot for at least 3 hours (before juicing it) so I know a lot of the water cooked out...but it was still a lot of water.

Once I put it through the colonder & put it back on the stove, I did let it simmer for about an hour. Then I could see that it was going to be much more than 3 quarts, & it was not watery at all. If I had simmered it down to 3 quarts, it would have been spicy tomato sauce or spicy tomato PASTE. Which I'm sure is very good in it's own right...LOL...but I wanted V8 Juice.

And we got it. :)

6 quarts of it. Well, actually 6 and a HALF quarts. So I processed the 6 quarts & chilled the half quart for a tasting party. It was really good. It was still a little thick for my own personal taste, but it does taste so good that I don't mind it really. Next time I'll not worry about cooking all of that water out.

It will be terrific in chili or vegetable soup! Or just to chill it & drink it!

Tomatoes!

My dh picked this table full of tomatoes this morning. He cut them up while we were working on school.
Then in the afternoon Dh worked the colonder while I filled the jars with juice & put them in the pressure canner.
And this is the result: 44 quarts of tomato juice!
I didn't plan this picture, but there in the background on one of the high chairs, is an overflowing bag of green peppers. Dh & ds picked them this afternoon. I'd like to try to make green pepper jelly. Most of them I'll dice & freeze so I wont have to buy the hard waxy green peppers that they sell in the stores in the winter.