Fermented Ketchup Recipe

[Thirsty Boy]

I was looking for a nice recipe for tomato sauce when I stumbled on the fact that traditionally Ketchup is a fermented food.... I love fermented stuff, so I am going to give it a go.

Pinched wholly from this webpage http://nourishedmagazine.com.au/blog/artic...ed-tomato-sauce - here's the explanation and the recipe. I haven't tried it, but you can bet I am going to!!!

Home Made Fermented Tomato Sauce
By Joanne Hay

Ketchup provides us with an excellent example of a condiment that was formerly fermented and therefore health promoting, but whose benefits were lost with large scale canning methods and a reliance on sugar rather than lactic acid as a preservative. The word ketchup derives from the Chinese Amoy dialect ke-tsiap or pickles fish-brine or sauce, the universal condiment of the ancient world. The english added foods like mushrooms, walnuts, cucumbers and oysters to this fermented brew; Americans added tomatoes from Mexico to make tomato ketchup. Sally Fallon

One of the hardest changes to make toward traditional food for a family is letting go of the sugar laden, chemical filled tomato sauce with barbecues, chips or sausages. For quite some time we spent oodles of dollars buying organic, sugar free tomato sauce, just to be able to give the kids this option. Now we just make our own. Its nice to be able to offer tomato sauce without hovering over the bottle, growling at the children when they overindulge and inevitably waste the precious condiment (are any kids conservative when serving their favourite food?) Its nice to join a village barbecue and have tomato sauce just like all the other families. So heres our familys version of Sally Fallons Ketchup.

Makes 500ml

3 cups canned tomato paste, preferably organic

1/4 cup whey
1 tablespoon sea salt

1/2 cup maple syrup or rapadura sugar (dehydrated sugar cane juice)

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

2 to 3 cloves of garlic, peeled and mashed

1/2 cup fish sauce (homemade or commercial)

Mix all ingredients until well blended. Place in a wide mouth glass jar with plastic lid. Leave at least 1 inch of space at the top of the jar. Sit in dark place at room temperature for about 2 days before transferring to refrigerator. You can transfer to a squeeze bottle. Try a used commercial squeeze bottle, buy a second hand one or just spoon tomato sauce on your plate. Children prefer less garlic and cayenne pepper.


TB

 

[Fourstar]

3 cups canned tomato paste, preferably organic

What do they mean by tomato paste?! Do they mean actual Italian tomato paste the super thick, salty and highly reduced stuff or simply passata?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomato_paste

Personally i'd just prefer to make my own tomato sauce via a slow lengthy boildown of peeled crushed tomatos (your own home grown or tinnned), some minced onions, garlic and spices (dont forget vinegar for some tartness). Reserve 1/3, blitz the other 2/3 with a barmix and add the chunky part back so you have some texture.

Bottle while hot in sanitied glass bottles, close and let the vacuum seal it up.

on the other hand if you still want the lactic tomato sauce.. a touch of lactic acid would help!

 

[brettprevans]

im assuming they mean passata

Im also assuming you get the fermentation going from the bugs in the whey?

thats also a lot of sugar. .

let us know how it goes thirsty, im keen to know.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

nope, I'm pretty sure they mean tomato paste, I imagine the idea is to get an intense tomato flavour, but not end up with the whole deal too runny once you add the whey, syrup and fish sauce, so the paste brings you back to a more "ketchup" type consistency... But there is no reason you can't make your own tomato paste too - reduce bog standard passata = tomato paste, all you need to do is remove some moisture.

Bugs from the whey for sure - could just use some juice off a bit of natural yoghurt or some cultured buttermilk. It is a fair bit of sugar, but ketchup is quite sweet and at least some of that sugar is going to get eaten by the bugs to produce booze and acid. I'd probably use a bit less.

 

[Airgead]

That sounds pretty nice. I'm guessing the whey still contains the lactic bacteria from cheesemaking so if you don't have any handy whey but do have some yoghurt or cheese starter (or just yoghurt for that matter but the taste of yoghurt on your tomato sauce may be a bit off) you could use that mixed into some water to provide the required bugs.

I might give that a go.

Cheers
Dave

 

[Airgead]

Made up a batch of this using some type A cheese culture in warm water as a substitute for whey. I'll see how it goes in a day or 2.

Cheers
Dave

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Cool Dave - lets us know how it goes.

I made cheese a little while ago, but forgot all about this stuff. Might grab a few tubs of decent tomato paste to keep in the cupboard, so next time I make cheese I can whip up some of this as a side project.

 

[Tony M]

You mean to say that the ten year old half bottle of tomato sauce that I found bubbling away on a shelf in my boat was still good? I should have kept it.

 

[Airgead]

Did a quick taste this morning.

I cut the salt in the recipe down to 2 tsp rather than the tablespoon as the fish sauce we have is pretty salty on its own. I suspect though that it will end up too salty for my taste even with the reduced amount. I might leave out the extra salt entirely next time and see what happens. The lacto hadn't really kicked in yet (only been on 12 hours) so can't say how the fermentation is going.

Should be nice though (if a bit too salty).

The tomato paste I made it from though is a masterpiece. 3kg of tomatoes cooked down into a fantastic paste. Made 3 cups of paste. Used 1 cup cooked up with onion and garlic to make pizzas and the other 2 cups went into this.

Cheers
Dave

 

[Fourstar]

The tomato paste I made it from though is a masterpiece. 3kg of tomatoes cooked down into a fantastic paste. Made 3 cups of paste. Used 1 cup cooked up with onion and garlic to make pizzas and the other 2 cups went into this.

Cheers
Dave

Did you give it the traditiona 'air dry'?! :icon_cheers:

 

[Airgead]

Did you give it the traditiona 'air dry'?! :icon_cheers:

Nope. I gave it the non-traditional boil the crap out of it.

Didn't even peel them.

Cheers
Dave

 

[Airgead]

Well.. here it is -



I shifted it to the fridge today. It has come out too salty. I'm guessing the recipe is uses a less salty fish sauce. Tastes pretty good though. Not sure the lactic culture did much. I suspect a few pinches of cheese culture in warm water isn't enough to do the job properly. Whey would have a much more active population of bacteria.

Next time I'll use a more active lactic culture and cut the extra salt right out.

Cheers
Dave