Tomato Ketchup Recipe - Assignment Example

This paper focuses on tomato ketchup as the selected commercially available processed food in supermarkets. Of particular importance would be to recreate the tomato ketchup in a wholesome manner from its Heinz processed variant. Important to note is the fact that tomatoes comprise the foundational ingredient in both homemade and commercially available tomato ketchup. The recreated recipe for homemade tomato ketchup borrows from Hornby (2009) and Williams (2011).

Recipe Testing

Ingredients:

• 1 pound of seeded, cored, and chopped tomatoes
• 1 large, roughly chopped onion
• 2 peeled and sliced cloves of garlic
• 1 roughly chopped stock celery
• Fresh medium-sized peeled and chopped ginger
• Olive oil
• ½ chopped fresh-seeded red chili
• 1 bunch of fresh basil with its leaves picked and stalks chopped
• 2 cloves
• 1 tablespoon of coriander seeds
• 1 teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper
• ¾ cup red wine vinegar
• ⅓ cup of soft brown sugar
• Sea salt

Directions

Place the vegetables, ginger, chili, basil stalks, olive oil, coriander seeds, cloves, and garlic in a saucepan.

Stir the mixture often while cooking in moderate heat for 10 to 15 minutes until it softens, seasoning these mixtures with a pinch of salt and pepper.

Add the tomatoes and 1½ cups of cold water and bring this to a boil, gently simmering it until it reduces almost half-fold.

Add basil leaves and using a hand blender, whiz the mixture before pushing twice through a sieve.

Put this sauce in a pan and add the vinegar and sugar.

Heat the pan allowing the mixture to simmer until it thickens. The seasoning can then be corrected to taste.

The now-ready ketchup (see Appendix I) will then be introduced to jars and allowed to cool before tightening the lid.  

Store the ketchup refrigerated for up to six months.

Ingredients Comparison

This homemade ketchup contains no artificial ingredients or preservatives. All the ingredients are natural. Even Heinz tomato ketchup is made of natural ingredients but uses them in their processed form (Heinz, 2013). Additionally, in both tomato ketchup, vinegar has been used as the tenderizer. Even so, it would be important to note that its tomatoes come as concentrate and not in the natural form as harvested from the farms. The production of tomato concentrate involves artificial processes and preservation that could therefore nullify the claim against the incorporation of artificial ingredients. Most of the other ingredients including onion powder and garlic powder would also have undergone processing hence affirming the reservation on the naturalness of Heinz tomato ketchup ingredients. Homemade tomato ketchup largely depends on the tomato for flavoring though pepper and coriander also play an important role in flavoring. On the other hand, Heinz tomato ketchup includes various undisclosed natural flavorings in addition to the undisclosed spices.

Comparison of Eating Quality

Both the homemade and Heinz tomato ketchup have almost the same viscosity. Even so, the homemade ketchup has a rougher texture and tastes salty due to the salt used as a preservative (Williams, 2011) than the Heinz ketchup whose smoothness is even and tastes more artificial. The Heinz variant appears deep red more than the homemade tomato ketchup which tends to appear more orange (see Appendix I and Appendix II respectively). This appearance could vary greatly depending on the kind of tomatoes used, with very ripe tomatoes giving deeper color than the slightly ripe ones. Whereas the color of Heinz tomato ketchup remains stable over its shelf life, the homemade tomato ketchup seems to fade in color over time. The shelf life of homemade tomato ketchup kept in normal clean containers would be 3 months and 6 months if kept in sterilized containers, both refrigerated (Hornby, 2009). The Heinz tomato ketchup on the other hand has a shelf life of up to 15 months.

Conclusion

Homemade tomato ketchup gives the assurance of the naturalness of the ingredients noted to have medicinal value such as celery noted to be an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory. This power to determine the ingredients further allows one to determine the color of the ketchup depending on the tomatoes used. Even so, the process could be time-consuming taking approximately two hours to come up with about 2 liters of the ketchup. The equipment available at home does not guarantee the desired quality of the end product, particularly on the texture. Heinz employs specialized equipment that processes the ketchup to high quality. In spite of the doubts cast on the wholesomeness of the naturalness of its product, there have been no side effects reported due to the use of the product. The product has about 9 months longer shelf-life than its homemade counterpart thus allowing for planning of its use over a long period of time. Therefore, I would recommend Heinz for the homemade tomato ketchup.