Recipe – Homemade Fruit Ketchup

Good morning!

It’s a lovely bright warm summer (ok, Fall) day here in Calgary, and as promised on the weekend, I have taken pictures of some of my jars of homemade fruit ketchup and I’m going to share the recipe here today.

I was telling Lisa yesterday that she was brave to put up a picture of herself in her jammies first thing in the morning on her blog. I’m not quite that brave (and I don't want to blind anybody, really! hahaha), but here’s a picture of me first thing this morning (in the glaring sun) holding a few jars of my ketchup…  Hi Lisa! (I don’t think you’d want to see me in my jammies, but shorts and T-shirt will do I hope! LOL) – I’m awake, but the sun is really bright so I'm squinting...sorry! :

And here’s a picture of a few jars of that delicious ketchup and a few of my organic garden tomatoes… yummo!!!

Don’t these look delicious? :o)

Now, let me teach you how to make some… it’s easy! It’s a traditional fruit ketchup that we do in Quebec. You can’t buy this in stores, although there is a company that sells it in Quebec (Habitant ketchup - not sure if they still do or not) which is somewhat of a commercial version of this, but I’ve never seen it sold outside of Quebec, and really, there’s nothing better tasting than the “homemade” version anyway. This recipe is from one of my old Quebec recipe books that dates back to 1978, but it's the same recipe that my grand-ma used to make when my mom was little (so, over 70 years ago).

So get out your chopping block, and let’s make a batch!

HOMEMADE FRENCH CANADIAN FRUIT KETCHUP

Ingredients:

10 red tomatoes

3 ripe peaches (you can also used ‘canned’ in their own juice or water)

3 ripe pears (you can also used ‘canned’ in their own juice or water)

2 onions, medium to large size, or 3 medium size

6 red apples, peeled & core removed (any kind will do)

1 sweet green pepper, large size

1 sweet red pepper, large size

2 stalks of celery, no leaves

2 cups of white granulated sugar

2 Tablespoons of salt

1 cup of white vinegar

1/2 a teaspoon of “mixed spices” *

(Note*: Mixed spices = a pinch of “all spice” + a pinch of “cinnamon” + a pinch of “nutmeg”)

Instructions:

You will need the following:

1 large stockpot (to cook your ketchup in)

1 large pot with boiling water  to blanch your tomatoes in.

1 cutting knife

1 cutting board

1 large mixing bowl to put in your cut fruits and veggies

1 mixing bowl to put in ‘garbage’ (I’ll explain below).

1 measuring cup (for the sugar and vinegar)

Some small measuring spoons.

How to make the ketchup:

1) Blanch the tomatoes in hot water to remove the skin. While you wait for the water to boil on the stove before putting in your tomatoes, you can set up your cutting station at your kitchen table:

I take my cutting board, my small sharp knife, and my 2 mixing bowls to the table. I use the larger mixing bowl to put in all the fruits and veggies that I cut up in medium bite size pieces. The 2nd mixing bowl is for putting garbage in (skins of apples, seeds from the sweet peppers, etc… ). That keeps my cutting board clean and it’s easy to just get rid of the garbage when it’s all in a bowl – like Rachel Ray does on her 30-minutes meal show (she uses a mixing bowl as her temporary garbage bin on her kitchen counter).

Blanch your tomatoes (click on the link to see step-by-step pictures I found on a site, if you don’t know how to blanch tomatoes, but only remove the skin – don’t remove the seeds). Set aside in the big stock pot where we will cook the ketchup. Don’t start the cooking process yet. Blanching tomatoes is necessary to prevent botulism when canning tomatoes, and it’s the easiest way to remove the skin – but be careful not to burn yourself. Tomatoes get really hot inside when they’ve been in boiling water. Once your tomatoes are skinless, chop them up in bite size chunks.

2) Wash, then peel and seed your fruits and vegetables. Chop them up in nice bite size chunks, and accumulate them in your large mixing bowl. (I turn on the TV in the living room – I can watch it from the kitchen table while chopping away… it’s a lot of peeling and chopping, so might as well put on something to watch while I’m at it!). Add your prepared fruits and veggies to the large stockpot where the tomatoes are waiting for you.

3) Add in the rest of the ingredients (sugar, vinegar, salt, spices), stir with a wood or plastic spoon and start the cooking process on “Medium-Low” (once it start boiling a bit, you can put it down to “SIMMER/LOW”), uncovered (no lid), then from that time, let it cook very slowly, uncovered, on “simmer-low” for a good 2 hours… and stir occasionally.

Then you’re ready to can your fruit ketchup!

The above recipe makes around 4 “1 litre jars” (the tallest mason jars), or around 6 to 7 medium size jars (not sure on the actual size), all depending how much juice your fruits and vegetables have, and also the size of your fruits and vegetables. Things vary a bit, but any extra leftover that can’t fit in the jars will be eaten up quickly anyway :)

There’s a truckload of information online for safe canning procedures, but be mindful of where you get your information – some procedures aren’t safe and you could get very sick.

If you don’t know how to do canning, then I suggest you do a search online for SAFE CANNING procedures, or you can start by reading from this site here.

Alternatively, you can simply cut the above recipe to only do 1/3 of it, and that would give you a small enough batch that you can just store it in the fridge in a clean sterilized jar with a good sealing lid on it, and as long as you eat it fairly quickly, then you wouldn’t have to worry about having to do a bunch of canning, etc.

Just remember to really use ‘safe’ canning & storage techniques, or else you could end up being very ill, or worse.

Enjoy!