Is Lacto-Fermented Homemade Ketchup Worth the Trouble?

I can state from personal experience that when you let it ferment long enough (3 days at room temperature, followed by 1-2 months in the fridge), there is no “fishy” taste at all. Good stuff! I only have two people in the house who eat it, so I don’t make it that often, but a quart lasts forever. Maybe you could find tomato paste in glass jars?

I make and use this ketchup recipe (just as it is listed in Nourishing Traditions) because it tastes great! No fishy after taste at all. In fact, the finished product tastes very gourmet in comparison to regular store-purchased ketchup.

I made this ketchup and thought it was great. My son complained about it, but then he complains about everything I make now-a-days. We don’t use ketchup much, so I’ve just switched to an organic brand that has no HFCS. But I’ve not been up on the BPAs and plastics, so now I’m thinking it may be worth making another batch. It was easy enough and came out better than the other fermented things I tried (sour kraut, ginger carrots, and sourdough bread – all were horrible disasters! Oh! My homemade yogurt is great though!)

Bionatura makes an organic tomato paste in a glass jar. That is what I use to make the ketchup along with Thai Kitchen’s fish sauce. It doesn’t taste fishy at all. I include the whey and it lasts for a very long time. I have not had a problem mold and I have stored mine for many months.

Thanks for sharing this, Kelly. I used to put ketchup on everything! In fact, I think french fries are nothing more than dipping sticks for ketchup. I obviously don’t use it much anymore, but still enjoy it when I have french fries on occasion. I may try making fermented ketchup at some point, but I expect that I’ll come to the same conclusion as you. I probably won’t use it enough to justify it.

I like how you put it in the original kethcup bottle to get it by your kids. Good justification for the use of plastic.

Thanks for doing this one, Kelly. I have wondered about making my own, but just haven’t wanted something else to have to bring the family around to. Like you, I’ve sneaked foods by in reused containers and such, but I have to say, they are getting suspicious of me! To think…my own mother did this with dry milk in the milk carton when I was a kid! Blech!
We go through ketchup in spurts (no pun intended) where a meal will take nearly a whole bottle and then it sits in the frig for weeks and weeks. My family loves it on beans, and while I soak them in whey or kefir laced water, some of us still might benefit from the extra lacto-goodies. Might be worth it for that…or we could just keep taking an extra digestive enzyme and use organic!

I made ketchup this week. I used Ren’s recipe http://ediblearia.com/2009/05/28/updated-compound-tomato-sauce-lacto-fermented-ketchup/ and put anchovies in it since I didn’t have fish sauce. It will be ready to put in the fridge today. I tasted it when it was mixed up before it fermented and I thought it was wonderful. Of course, the big test will be when I serve it to the family. They are pretty good sports about my kitchen experiments but messing with their ketchup might be taking it a little too far.

I’ve made the ketchup from Nourishing Traditions and it was gross. No one ate it. It lasted forever in the fridge before I threw it out.

We simply stopped using ketchup unless we go out for dinner.

I may consider making it w/o fish next time and see if we like it.

I pretty much use the exact recipe as you, Kelly! My family hasn’t objected to it much. I personally really like it, it tastes so much more real than the bottled stuff – I can’t even enjoy restaurant ketchup any more at all! I guess it’s not perfect with the canned tomato sauce, but since we don’t eat a lot of ketchup, either, I figure it’s not the worst we could do. Can’t do it all perfectly, right?

But I like Mindy’s idea of making ketchup from homegrown tomatoes. That has to be the best option if it’s available. Thanks for the idea, Mindy!

The fermented ketchup is good as a novelty for us, but no one notices much if there’s no ketchup in the house. We prefer our burgers with just cheese and bacon!

For the tiny amount of effort it takes, and for the amount of ketchup I personally like to use right now (pregnancy cravings!), I find this very worthwhile. I also have been using the BioNaturae in glass jars for years.

FYI for Celiacs, I also contacted the company to ask if their tomato paste was gluten free, and it is. BioNaturae also makes a lot of pasta, so I had to be sure.

I can’t remember the last time I bought ketchup. I make it, but I use a different recipe than the one in NT, and it isn’t lacto-fermented, nor does it use fish sauce. But it is acceptable to my son’s friends, who are a tough-to-please crowd sometimes.

I started with Dana Carpender’s no-sugar ketchup recipe from her many low carb books and tweaked it here and there. It’s very fast to make and it keeps a long time in the fridge. The main difference is that instead of Splenda, I use Grade B (dark & flavorful) maple syrup. I also don’t add the guar or zanthan gum, either; if liquid separates I simply stir it back in. I only make enough to fill a pint sized wide mouth glass jar, but with only one child, we don’t use as much ketchup as most families (plus he loves mustard and homemade mayo even more!). No one seems to mind not squeezing it out of a bottle, either.

Canned tomato paste, diced tomatoes, and tomato sauce were some of the few remaining canned staple items in my pantry, but I’m trying to reduce my use of them for two reasons – first, the BPA can linings you mention, and second, I’m trying to cook more seasonally and simply not using tomatoes when they are out of season. But there are a few things I like to make that require some preserved tomato products. I found organic tomato paste packaged in glass jars at one of my locally owned chains of “natural foods” (the brand is Bionaturae and it’s imported from Italy). They are a bit pricey and definitely not local or seasonal, but I’ve cut my use of out-of-season tomatoes so much our winter-spring tomato consumption is low anyway and a few of these jars of paste a year won’t blow my budget. And they were on sale when I noticed them, so that’s a good time to stock the pantry. If I only need a tablespoon or two of paste, I can recap the jar and store it in the freezer; it is scoopable again with a short time to defrost on the counter. I re-use the small jars, too.

I haven’t made ketchup myself, but I have eaten lacto-fermented ketchup made according to WAPF principles and it was good. I don’t eat much of it, though, so haven’t bothered to make it myself.

The point of fish sauce isn’t to make it fishy tasting, but to add the savoriness created by glutamic acid, if I remember correctly, the savory taste known as “umami” in Japanese; it’s what chemical food processors try to achieve with MSG, monosodium glutamate. The original ketchup was a fermented, fish-based condiment, if memory serves me right.
This is all making me hungry…

Interesting post. Thanks for experimenting for us! Yes, that fish sauce in the Nourishing Traditions recipe was a real “Ill never try this one” for me. Fish taste is too overpowering and my DH isn’t all that crazy about fish anyway. I did make homemade ketchup to can many years ago, but didn’t think it was all that great. We consume so little ketchup anyway that I’ll probably just stick to the organic brands.

If you make a bunch of tomato paste/puree from the tomatoes at the Farmer’s Market, then you wouldn’t be starting with canned tomato paste.
I have never made the NT recipe, but seeing your post gave me the idea to try it, as I have a bunch of frozen tomatoes from this summer.

From the Meijer “Naturals” product line, the 32 oz. jar is $1.99 and has no HFCS or GMOs so that is what we buy.

Does anyone have a good BBQ sauce recipe? All the ones in the store have HFCS.

http://www.sustainableeats.com/2009/05/27/its-officially-barbecue-season/

whiskey bbq sauce.

“As I’m scooping the organic canned tomato paste into the bowl, all I can think about is the BPA.” quoting you Kelly – cracked me up because ever since I watched the video on filings in boxed cereals and other foods that claim to be fortified I can’t even walk down a cereal aisle in a store now with out going bonkers over it……and now I’m gone crazy over the alias’ names and other forms of msg. I’ve gone batty with labels.
Fish sauce in ketchup…….what ever were they thinking. I don’t think I would go to the trouble of making my own. For how little we use ketchup a good organic / high fructose corn syrup free is just fine.

Kelly,
Fish sauce does not taste like fish. Sure, it smells so bad it will clear the room when you open it, but it has a very mild flavor to say the least.
I make my own, out of wild Hooligan we keep on hand.
When I need it in a recipe, I open and add so fast!!!
If I had company over though, I would actually step outside to add it, so they would not be scared off by the food, LOL!
Paula

You can get the Bionatura tomato paste from UNFI or from Whole Foods.

I use store bought fish sauce (Thai Kitchen) and yes, I do keep it on hand. While I haven’t made ketchup yet, I have used the fish sauce in other things. It does not taste fishy – believe me, I would notice! It is sort of salty, but more than just salty. It adds a nice rich, salty flavor to foods. I wouldn’t hesitate to use it in ketchup if I ever tried to make it.

“So what else do you guys use fish sauce in??”

I also always keep a bottle of fish sauce in my cupboard for its savory, salty, flavor-enhancing “umami” quality.

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

Fish sauce doesn’t taste at all like it smells. I used to use Thai Kitchen brand because that’s about all I could find in the grocery stores in my community. But a Vietnamese acquaintance told me of his favorite fish sauce brand, which I found during a visit to an Asian supermarket in San Diego (99 Ranch Market).

I used to keep fish sauce in the refrigerator, but I’ve noticed the brands sold in the Asian supermarket usually say on the label NOT to store in the refrigerator as cold conditions can cause salt crystal formation, which I noticed did happen, so I changed the location. With its supersaturated salt solution, fish sauce keeps fine in my kitchen cupboard next to vinegars and worcestershire sauce.

Fermented anchovy condiments are not new, nor are they exclusively Asian. Wikipedia says this in its Worcestershire sauce page:

“A fermented fish sauce called garum was a staple of Greco-Roman cuisine and of the Mediterranean economy of the Roman Empire, and the use of some similar fermented anchovy sauces in Europe can be traced back to the 17th century. The Worcestershire variety became popular in the 1840s and is a legacy of the British rule of the Indian sub continent. Theories vary concerning its discovery or invention.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcestershire_sauce
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_sauce

I add fish sauce to any Thai-inspired coconut milk soup (easy variations on the coconut milk soups in Eat Fat Lose Fat). I make this quick soup to use up leftover meat, chicken, or fish.

I use a touch of fish sauce in homemade Caesar salad dressing (when I don’t have any anchovies); when I need to substitute water because I don’t have much broth; in recipes that call for bouillon (which I no longer buy); and any other time a savory saltiness is called for. I add fish sauce in small doses and taste, because a little goes a long way. It takes me a year or two to use an entire 23 oz. bottle.

Oh, Kelly, I beg to disagree with your conclusion on the ketchup! Did you have the ketchup at the Friday night dinner? That was mine, and so many people have commented on how much they loved it!
I do use both fish sauce, and anchovy filets. It does not make the ketchup fishy, just rich and flavorful! I also use more spices, and start with crushed tomatos because we hate the consistency of ketchup made only with tomato paste.
My recipe will be up on the WAPF conference recipe page as soon as Jill returns from her vacation. Give it a try; I make it by the gallon, it is so good!

Yes Maureen, please post the link with directions from vine to jar. I made some this summer from my tomatoes run through a roma and it took 2 days to cook them down to thick. I made the mistake of putting the spices in from the get go and by the time it was thick enough it was bitter and way too spicey. I’d love to make it again but I didn’t like the taste and I have a few gallons of it now! Luckily the kids didn’t mind. But then when you are using it for hot lava to dip your tallow-fried potatoes in how can you go wrong?

“I then transferred it into our old ketchup bottle in the fridge (using a baby spoon) to more easily get it by the kids.”

Bwahahaha, Kelly, you are awesome!

I’m paying close attention…bring it on!

Two thoughts about fish sauce: (1) Ingredients shouldn’t go much beyond anchovies, salt, and water. Beware of MSG–lots of them have MSG in them! (2) Glass bottle is better than plastic, if you have a choice.

Pufina Patis brand fish sauce is the brand used by a Vietnamese immigrant I know. Pufina is made in the Philippine and is labeled “export quality” & “Commerce with the United States”, so perhaps that means that there are versions for domestic use that are somewhat different – hmmm.

Ingredients listed are: Fish extract (assorted blends of scads, herrings, sardines, mackerel), water and salt less than 1/10 of 1% benzoate of soda added as preservative. Nutrient label lists a serving as 1 teaspoon (not tablespoon like the others I have), and 0 carbs/protein. Basically only sodium is counted, 570 mg in a serving. No sugars. Also says excellent for seasoning and general table use.

I have some concerns about the sodium benzoate, as it probably isn’t particularly safe, and it isn’t necessary since salt is an effective preservative, too. So even with the recommendation for this fish sauce, I doubt I’d use it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_benzoate

If you’re worried about the BPA from the Tomato sauce cans, use organic tomato powder. I recently discovered this stuff shortly before we disposed of the last of our canned foods (for the same reason…BPA) and it is wonderful! Use with a little water to make tomato paste, a little more water for sauce, etc….
At about $20 a pound it goes a long way and the taste is amazing. I am going to try your fish sauce-less recipe this week and definitely use Alex’s tip with the old ketchup bottle to get by the kids. Thank you Kelly…and friends!
I’ll let you know…

Azure Standard has it.