Vital ketchup

This stuff is a little addictive, but in a good way.

It is great as a pasta sauce, on pizzas, mixed into a bean stew, a chilli or a bolognaise. Other than with the pizza, if you mix it in after the meal has been cooked and has cooled a little, the microbes will be living. I also drizzle it cold onto sourdough beneath avocado, or cheese or hummus. You get the picture. And you don’t need to stick to the recipe religiously. By altering just a few of the ingredients, you can change the flavour noticeably, which is wonderful. Experiment!

This is my fermented ketchup recipe

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Ingredients

• 800g of tomatoes or alternatively 350g of fresh tomato puree

• Chillis, to taste chopped. I use half a chilli

• 3 garlic cloves chopped

• ¼ tsp ground cinnamon

• Grated ginger to taste

• Fresh Mint to taste, chopped

• Chive heads to taste, chopped

• 60g maple syrup

• 100ml apple cider vinegar (or kombucha vinegar or water kefir vinegar)

Equipment

• 1/2 litre Kilner jar
  Washed in hot water or that has been through the dishwasher

• Sieve

• Saucepan

• Blender

• Set of scales

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Method

To make the puree

1. Dip the tomatoes in boiling water.

2. Remove their skins.

3. Blend.

4. Sieve out the pips. The sieving is a little time-consuming, but I like the smooth consistency it gives. You can leave the pips in (nutritious) if you don’t mind the texture!

5. Heat gently until reduced and well thickened.

To make the ketchup

1. Once you have made the tomato puree, put all the ingredients with the puree into the blender and blend.

2. Pour it all into a clean ½ litre kilner jar, leaving a bit of expansion space at the top.

3. Close the lid and leave at room temperature for 2-3 days. I can tell when mine is active because you start to see some clear tomato fluid at the bottom of the kilner and the more dense material rises up. Taste it and see what you think. Either refrigerate then or mix and leave to ferment a little longer.

4. When you love the taste, refrigerate, where it will keep until it is consumed.

   Note: you can substitute the maple syrup for honey if you prefer. I also nearly always add some sauerkraut and a little of its juice or my favourite is to add a dollop of kimchi in before I blend it all, see what combination suits you and yours.

Glitches and hitches

Don’t worry if a bit of mould grows on the surface. Just remove the mouldy bit, keep calm and carry on. Obviously, if the mould is a very bright, unusual colour, you will need to take it more seriously, but this is a vanishingly rare occurrence.

Don’t worry if foam collects on the surface, this is not unusual either. I scoop it off with a clean spoon and shut the lid again.

Fermentation is a very old and very reliable process. Try it.