Every year I plant two cherry tomato plants.
1. They begin producing edible stuff faster than the big tomato plants.
2. They're prolific
I only need one, but I always plant two in case I lose one to it sucking, or wildlife eating it, or something. But both always survive, and in the past I have had many hundreds of cherry tomatoes rotting on the ground by the end of the year, because I eat the full sized tomatoes as often as I can.
And I hate waste, but what can you do?
Then I realized, ketchup. (This process would also work to make a quart of tomato sauce, if you preferred)
This is actually my second go-round, this year. I wasn't sure if i would like it, so didn't document the process the first time. But, I had another 5-ish pounds of cherry tomatoes out there, and loved the first batch, so I did it again.
This is one of my two plants. Grown in my homemade compost, they grow thick and crazy. Also organic. No pesticides and stuff. With this recipe I just pick until I fill the colander.
You remove the skin at one point. With big tomatoes it's easy to do it first with a hot scald, but 300 cherries is too much work. So I smash them a bit so there's liquid at the bottom, simmer, stir, and after a bit the skins simply slough off. I COULD filter out the skin and seeds now, but I want to keep as much meat in the juice.... so I blend first.
I blend, and strain/fine mesh strain after it's back in the pot. I get all the skins and maybe 90% of the seeds this way, which is good enough for me. Then you just simmer/stir until the liquid gets reduced to a thickness you like.
With a full colander, I end up with about 2 pints of ketchup. In the future I will save a couple squeeze-ketchup bottles and repurpose them.
This makes you, basically, gourmet ketchup. There are a dozen different recipes out there, some peeps like brown sugar ketchup, some like it spicy, etc. No ingredients you don't know about, no preservatives, and as always, you know there are no insects in it, unlike food approved by the USDA.
It's delish.
Make your own KETCHUP
Make your own KETCHUP
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"Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid."
Make your own KETCHUP
When trying to get my bougie, hippie gf to eat it, I call it "locally sourced, organic, gourmet tomato puree."
"Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid."