Although ketchup is a mainstay in most kitchens, the best-selling brands are packed in plastic, but don’t contain nearly as many tomatoes as artisan brands. The ‘national brand’ is not, it’s owned by a huge multi-national American food company and mostly packs in plastic, and even did not come out top in blind taste tests (budget supermarket brands did just as well). A lot of the ‘traditional favourites’ are simply due to marketing spiel. Live life according to your own authentic ethics, not from marketing spiel! 9 Meals from Anarchy make good ketchups.
Keep ketchup away from pets, due to green tomatoes, garlic, onion etc. Read food safety for people & pets.
Mr Organic Italian Ketchup is made with sun-ripened tomatoes that are sea-freighted from known farms in Italy, and packed within hours of harvest. Each bottle packs 30 juicy tomatoes in, and once opened, the bottle lasts for 8 weeks in the fridge.
Instead, visit local indie farm and health shops to find homegrown artisan brands, that are not just better for the planet and keep money within local communities (and also helps support tomato farms). But they taste better too (more tomatoes) and also reduce carbon emissions, by not flying brands in from half way across the world, to land on supermarket shelves.
Just recently, one major supermarket temporarily stopped selling a top-brand-name ketchup (and its baked beans) due to a row over prices affected by inflation, arguing that they needed to ensure their customers had access to decent affordable food. There are so many caveats to this. For a start, good decent affordable food is usually making your own meals from fresh produce. American food campaigner says that if supermarkets really cared about affordability and health, they would have aisles and aisles of fresh food, and a couple of aisles of processed high-profit junk food. Instead, all supermarkets just have around four aisles of fresh food, and everything else is junk food!
Food poverty campaigner Jack Monroe recently launched her own Vimes Index, saying that supermarkets had used inflation as a cover to raise the prices of everyday goods (like apples) but kept existing prices for luxury goods (like champagne). Jack was recently contacted by an elderly gentleman who had eaten a teaspoon of toothpaste for his dinner, to fool himself into thinking he had eaten something. Tesco responded by saying their own prices are affected by rising energy prices. But this is because big supermarkets use oil from lorries (bringing foods from central distribution houses miles away (that are heated by oil) and many foods are made from factory-farmed animals (powered by fossil fuels) and palm oil (lots of oil to fly them to England from Indonesia). That’s why trying to find local walkable shops that sell seasonal foods is a good idea.
The Vimes Boots Index is a warning shot to retailers who keep their £7.50 ready means and £6 bottles of wine at the same price for a decade, while quadrupling the price of basic stock cubes and broken irregular grains of white rice. This issue isn’t going anywhere, and neither am I. Jack Monroe
make your own tomato ketchup
It’s pretty easy to make your own ketchup, as long as you have a few choice ingredients to hand and a nice glass bottle to store it in. Obviously it won’t have all the preservative chemicals, so chill after opening and use it up quickly.
Make use of seasonal produce with this beetroot ketchup (The Veg Space). Perfect for dunking chips, you can leave out the chilli for children or milder palates. Wonderful also on a veggie burger, or as part of a ‘Full English’ veggie breakfast.
This recipe is very tasty due to onion, carrot and celery (the base for most Italian meals) and also adds in optional garlic, and is sweetened with a little natural sugar. For homemade ketchup, you’ll have to sterilise kilner jars or bottles, for safety. This is easy to do, just run on the hottest cycle of a dishwasher top shelf, or wash in hot soapy water and rinse, then place in a preheated oven (140°C / 210°F / Gas Mark 1) for 15 to 20 minutes. For rubber seals, sterilise these by soaking in a jug of boiling water.
the history of tomato ketchup
You would think that ketchup was invented in England or the US (where it’s found in 97% of homes). But in fact it was invented in China, where it had no tomatoes in it! It was actually made into a sauce from soy and meat and fish, which sounds horrible.It was only when tomatoes began to be eaten (people thought before they were toxic due to lead leaching into their food from acid of tomato). Somewhere along the line, it made it here and to the States, to be squirted onto chips and hot dogs.
Some people prefer brown sauce instead of ketchup on their chips and English breakfast (if you prefer brown sauce, Biona makes a nice organic one). A combination of wine, ketchup, black pepper and sometimes beer, this has been around since 1843. Another popular condiment alternative is Hendersons Relish. Known as the ‘vegan Worcestershire sauce’ of Sheffield, rumour has it that actor Sean Bean is such a fan, that he packs it in his suitacase, whenever he goes off on acting trips. It’s not natural (it contains saccharin sweetener) but it’s an institution all the same, sold in all chip shops up north.
