Making Home Made Ketchup

     Have you ever wondered how to make ketchup?  I was invited by one of my friends to a little ketchup making party.  I have never made it, so thought why not?  Boy, was I surprised at all the steps involved in making just a few jars of the yummy red sauce!  It was pretty much a whole day event, but we had a lot of fun and in the end the fresh home made ketchup tastes amazing!  Since I was just helping out, I didn't really have a chance to write any of the steps down, so I found a great site online, PickYourOwn.org, that explains everything we did that day!  But I did manage to snap a few pictures.

Fresh Organic Tomatoes

 Cooking down the tomatoes with onions and spices

The tomatoes cooked down

Running the cooked tomatoes through a food mill

The juice from the tomato mixture

The finished ketchup after it's been canned

     The ketchup turned out so amazing and very different then the bottled kind you get at the grocery store.  If you have the time and supplies, making your own ketchup is a lot of fun, however time consuming.  It was totally worth it to know what exactly you and your family are eating, especially if your little man, like mine, loves ketchup on everything!

     I recently used a jar on one of Paula Deen's recipes Old-Fashioned Meat Loaf and it turned out AWESOME!!  Happy ketchup making!!