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Grandma’s Homemade Ketchup can be made with fresh tomatoes and onions or canned tomato juice for a condiment that will remind you of the good old days. With a mixture of cinnamon and ground cloves, this catsup – as Grandma called it – is delicious on everything.
This is our grandma’s favorite condiment. Growing up, we ate it on everything, even homemade dumplings. It has a unique flavor from cinnamon and ground cloves. To this day, every recipe that has ground cloves reminds us of Grandma and this recipe.
Table of Contents
Old-Fashioned Catsup
Barbara decided to try her hand at making Grandma’s catsup (that’s what we grew up calling it) earlier this year. One bite of this took us right back to our childhood.
Grandma made her homemade ketchup from garden fresh tomatoes. She would boil down the tomatoes and onions until she had 2 gallons of fresh tomato juice. You can definitely do this and then just add the rest of the ingredients.
Since tomatoes were out of season when Barbara decided to make Grandma’s Homemade Ketchup, she used canned tomato juice. Grandma’s version was a thinner, runnier texture; while Barbara’s has more of a consistency of the ketchup you buy at the store.
Please note, all Barbara had was whole cloves which she ground herself. You’ll notice the flecks of cloves in our photos.
Ingredient List
Fresh Ripe Tomatoes
Fresh Onion
Salt
Ground Cinnamon
Ground Clove
White Vinegar
How to Make Homemade Ketchup
Step by Step Instructions
Cook tomato and onion in large pot or large saucepan until onions are translucent.
Run juice through a sieve and discard onions.
Add juice back to pot and mix in salt, cinnamon, cloves and vinegar.
Boil until reduced by one-third.
Mix together sugar and cornstarch and then add to the liquid mixture.
Turn down heat and whisk constantly until thickened.
Cool and then refrigerate.
Full recipe for gourmet ketchup is at the bottom of this post.
Recipe FAQs
Isn’t it cool that old fashioned ketchup is really a gourmet ketchup?
The distinct flavors of this homemade catsup are ground cloves and ground cinnamon.
You can use fresh garden tomatoes or take a shortcut by starting with canned tomato juice.
This homemade catsup stores great in the refrigerator.
Try using the leftover homemade catsup in pulled pork like this Crock Pot Sweet Pulled Pork Recipe.
Small Batch Ketchup Recipe
You can also do a smaller quantity if you are only wanting 1 quart of ketchup. Here’s the ingredient measurements for the smaller batch of Grandma’s Homemade Ketchup:
46 oz. tomato juice
1/2 onion, shredded
2 Tablespoons salt
1/2 Tablespoon cinnamon
1/2 Tablespoon ground cloves
3/4 cup vinegar
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 Tablespoons cornstarch
Why is my homemade ketchup not thickening?
If your homemade ketchup is not thickening, it could be due to a few reasons.
The first thing to check is your patience. Make sure you have cooked it for a sufficient amount of time. The reduction process takes a long time; let the mixture simmer until it reaches the desired thickness.
Secondly, the ratio of cornstarch to liquid in your recipe may be off. If you added too much liquid or too little cornstarch, it may not thicken properly.
Lastly, be sure you whisk constantly while the ketchup is simmering on low heat. This will help the cornstarch to activate and thicken the mixture.
Grandma's Homemade Ketchup can be made with fresh tomatoes and onions or canned tomato juice for a condiment that will remind you of the good old days. With a mixture of cinnamon and ground cloves, this catsup – as Grandma called it – is delicious on everything.
American horticulturist James Mease created the first known recipe for tomato ketchup in 1812. His version of sauce included brandy but lacked regular vinegar and sugar. Soon, many tomato-based ketchup recipes appeared in Europe and the USA. Yet, many of them contained previous additions, like oysters or anchovies.
Instead, the precursor to our ketchup was a fermented fish sauce from southern China. As far back as 300 B.C., texts began documenting the use of fermented pastes made from fish entrails, meat byproducts and soybeans.
I wouldn't tell you to make your own ketchup if I didn't think it was worth it. This ketchup recipe makes the most delicious ketchup that knocks the socks off anything you can buy in the condiment aisle. I love how this recipe uses real ingredients and how we can control how sweet our ketchup turns out.
The condiment made its way west via European merchants, taking with it Westernized pronunciations. Early recipes for ketchup (or catsup, if you like) incorporated a wide variety of ingredients like mushrooms, walnuts, and shellfish (hence the distinction tomato ketchup).
Tomato ketchup. Many variations of ketchup were created, but the tomato-based version did not appear until around a century after other types. An early recipe for "Tomato Catsup" from 1817 includes anchovies: Gather a gallon of fine, red, and full ripe tomatas; mash them with one pound of salt.
During the 1800s, the red color of ketchup was achieved by adding natural or artificial red dyes, often taken from sources such as cochineal insects, and later moving to other sources such as tomatoes or modern FDA-approved food colorings.
It contains high quantities of sugar, salt, fructose, preservatives and corn syrup. All of these ingredients when combined together have an adverse effect on the body.
In his book Pure Ketchup: A History of America's National Condiment, With Recipes, Andrew F. Smith writes that “none of the early ketchup recipes had anything to do with the tomato.” Indeed, that latter point is key—as the predominant form of ketchup for much of history was based on mushrooms, not tomatoes.
Ketchup was believed to have health benefits due to its fermented nature and the presence of various ingredients. In traditional Chinese medicine, fermented foods were often considered beneficial for digestion and overall health. European doctors like Dr.
Two ingredients of concern in ketchup are salt and sugar. Per tablespoon, ketchup contains 4 grams of sugar and 190 milligrams of sodium. Although 4 grams of sugar doesn't seem like a lot, much of it comes from added sugar, as opposed to the natural sugar found in tomatoes.
As someone that has made my own ketchup and tomato sauces at home, I challenge the “cheap” part of that. I've always found it more expensive to make my own, not less. That doesn't mean it's not worth it to buy the ingredients I need (if I could grow them myself, that might make a big difference in cost, but I can't).
The first ketchup is centuries old … and very different.
According to the History Channel, a fish sauce referred to as "ge-thcup" or "koe-cheup" in the local southern Chinese dialect likely served as the starting point for ketchup's long, winding journey to its present form.
Heinz's lucky number. According to the company's website, in 1896, the founder was inspired by an advertisem*nt he saw for “21 styles of shoes.” He considered 57 to be magical and lucky, so he came up with the slogan “57 Varieties” despite the fact the company offered more than 60 products at the time.
McDonald's ketchup consists of tomato concentrate from red ripe tomatoes, distilled vinegar, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, water, salt, and natural flavors. Heinz doesn't have the water, like McDonald's does, and Heinz contains onion powder and "spice," while McDonald's does not.
We think of ketchup as a thick red sauce, but it was something pretty different in the beginning. It originated as a thin soy sauce made from fermented fish most likely from a region called Tonkin, or in what we call Vietnam today. It was common throughout Southeast Asia in the 17th century.
Heinz Company didn't start producing the sauce until 1876. The company originally called it catsup, but soon switched to ketchup to stand out. Today, ketchup is the standard, while catsup is still used occasionally in the southern U.S.
Heinz's first product would have been grated horseradish, but by 1895 the company also offered evaporated horseradish. Evaporated came at a cheaper price point and could be stored for long periods at temperatures that would degrade the fresh product.
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