Greetings, Ketchuplovers! And all you fans of red appetizers in general!
Today I am finally ready to post the whole process of my recent experience with homemade ketchup and the steps I had to go through in order to get some...
I did post a Preview last week, as soon as I returned from my village with hands still sticky with tomato...not that literally.
Starting with the tomatoes in the garden...these are the only decent tomatoes there. It has been a terrible year for tomatoes. My grandparents used to make ketchup from their own produce. Grown right there. But in May something happened and some cultures couldn't grow and bear fruit. Some people planted new sprouts. We're still waiting on them but in our case, the aging masters of the garden were not able to visit and irrigate often enough this summer.
So tomatoes had to be bought to actually continue with the process. And our capacity was enough for about thirty kilos.
A third of them being washed at a time...
Then my assistants cut them into pieces, each tomato in four. Ah, wait, I got no pictures of that...
I was actually about to get busy with mashing them inside a plastic grinder, a cheap substitute for the metal machine of old.
Anyway, juice flowed and I kept rotating that handle, feeding the mouth of the grinder tomato slices, emptying the pan, recycling tomatoes one more time, etc.
For about four hours.
When all that was ready early in the afternoon, boiling began. Lots of water was to evaporate until the juice was thick. There were some ingredients in a clean cloth, bound in a ball and dipped into the container. Garlic, Onion, Savory, Salt, and some small amount of Starch at some point near the end.
Before that, though, the fire had to burn...
...and it had to be maintained.
This is not your regular one-armed lumberjack. This is me, taking photos with one hand while holding the ax with the other. But I also did some wood chopping after that.
Boil, Ketchup, Boil...
For Three Or Four More Midday Hours...
Boil, Boil, Boil!
Let me take you through that as fast as I can...
Tick-tock...
tick-tock...
Stir Your Ketchup,
Mind The Smoke!
Give The Viewer Space Enough,
So That Heads Don't Hurt.
Help Them Forget
You Were Going To Be Quick.
Keep Stirring The Ketchup
Cause That Is The Trick.
Oh, cool! Can you see my accidental bottle design just above this table-like line?
When all was stirred and done, I had to take it off to cool and let my assistants fill the jars.
Alas, infinite amounts there were not.
Twenty-three little jars.
Of hard-made...
I mean...homemade...
Awesome...
Ketchup.
That's it. That's all there ever was. Except that the jars needed to boil once more so that their lids can be...uh...pressurized? Or something. Vacuum. You know. It keeps food from spoiling too early.
All right, that's it.
Yours,
Manol, The Ketchupmaker
