You don't give any indication whether or not you think this is a bad thing. That said, I'm willing to wager than you are unhappy with your current ketchup otherwise you wouldn't have posted anything.
Luckily you have plenty of alternatives as the competition in the ketchup market is fierce. You don't even need to limit yourself to American products, you are free to purchase ketchup made in other countries like Japan.
And finally you have the option of making your own and formulating it to your preference.
I make my own New Zealand-style plum sauce from scratch; it is very similar to ketchup. I make it every other year or so when my local Santa Rosa plums (at the farmers market) are particularly good.
I am trying to make ketchup. I have 6kg of tomatoes which I have been reducing down since yesterday. I've already blended and added my cider vinegar, allspice, brown sugar, salt and dry mustard and am doing the final reduction. It's the same recipe as last year but it just doesn't seem the same. Other than the weather being crappy in Auckland I don't know what's happened.
It just doesn't have any zing to it. It's sweet enough and looks nice. But I like that bite but am afraid to add too much vinegar to it as I'm in the process of letting it thicken up.
Thank you for filling out the vast gaps of your original post.
It could be a poor tomato season. I won't make NZ plum sauce unless the local plums are exceptional. I've made the sauce with unmemorable harvests and I don't think the end product is worth it.
You could simply freeze what you have now as pasta sauce and try again with the late season crop.
2021 was not conducive to a good tomato harvest in the SF Bay Area and none of my tomato plants thrived. The stuff at the farmers market wasn't much better.
I skipped my plum sauce production this past summer. (California had an epic drought.) I don't have any plum trees in my small community garden plot, I rely on local production from other growers but I wasn't surprised at the poor harvest.
These homemade savoury sauces are fantastic when the harvest is superior so I understand your frustration when things don't go according to plan. But 80% of the success of a batch of sauce is up to Mother Nature.
Or another idea. If the tomatoes themselves this year are different and don't give you enough zing in you usual ketchup recipe, make this batch into something else you could use, like tomato chutney.
Another tactic to consider in the future would be to roast some/all of the mediocre tomatoes in the oven. This evaporates a lot of the moisture and concentrates the acidity while developing other flavor compounds.
For sure this will result in a different flavor profile so you will have to reflect carefully whether or not you want that in the final product.
Again, you could oven roast part of the tomatoes so the flavor profile change is not so assertive.
Another option would be to supplant your own harvest with better tomatoes from the farmers market. I buy the overripe or sort-outs for making sauce.
Should read: if not, not. Also, even if you can't get the zing now that you usually get, it's still worth bottling the ketchup as is. It may mature in bottle and taste better when opened. And even if just ok, you can combine it - once opened - with other sauces and garnishes to make useful condiments.
I have just done that. I added a little more dry mustard & pepper, a dash of vinegar and a good dollop of mollases sugar while reheating to bottle. New Zealand has had a weird summer and it's been a struggle to get the tomatoes to ripen on the vine this year! In our town everywhere you look there are tomatoes on window sills and they're ridiculous expensive to buy. So I've taken the plunge and bottled it and am listening to caps popping as I write. It smells good which is hopefully a good sign. Hope all my friends who are patiently waiting for their yearly fix are happy. Have nearly enough fruit for another round so fingers crossed it won't be such a mission next round. Thanks everyone.
11 Comments
Luckily you have plenty of alternatives as the competition in the ketchup market is fierce. You don't even need to limit yourself to American products, you are free to purchase ketchup made in other countries like Japan.
And finally you have the option of making your own and formulating it to your preference.
I make my own New Zealand-style plum sauce from scratch; it is very similar to ketchup. I make it every other year or so when my local Santa Rosa plums (at the farmers market) are particularly good.
I have 6kg of tomatoes which I have been reducing down since yesterday. I've already blended and added my cider vinegar, allspice, brown sugar, salt and dry mustard and am doing the final reduction. It's the same recipe as last year but it just doesn't seem the same. Other than the weather being crappy in Auckland I don't know what's happened.
It could be a poor tomato season. I won't make NZ plum sauce unless the local plums are exceptional. I've made the sauce with unmemorable harvests and I don't think the end product is worth it.
You could simply freeze what you have now as pasta sauce and try again with the late season crop.
Thank you for your answers that's a good thing to think about.
I skipped my plum sauce production this past summer. (California had an epic drought.) I don't have any plum trees in my small community garden plot, I rely on local production from other growers but I wasn't surprised at the poor harvest.
These homemade savoury sauces are fantastic when the harvest is superior so I understand your frustration when things don't go according to plan. But 80% of the success of a batch of sauce is up to Mother Nature.
Best of luck.
If the tomatoes themselves this year are different and don't give you enough zing in you usual ketchup recipe, make this batch into something else you could use, like tomato chutney.
For sure this will result in a different flavor profile so you will have to reflect carefully whether or not you want that in the final product.
Again, you could oven roast part of the tomatoes so the flavor profile change is not so assertive.
Another option would be to supplant your own harvest with better tomatoes from the farmers market. I buy the overripe or sort-outs for making sauce.
Also, even if you can't get the zing now that you usually get, it's still worth bottling the ketchup as is.
It may mature in bottle and taste better when opened.
And even if just ok, you can combine it - once opened - with other sauces and garnishes to make useful condiments.