Canning Homemade Ketchup: An Old-Fashioned Tomato Ketchup Recipe

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Canning Homemade Ketchup: An Old-Fashioned Tomato Ketchup Recipe

There comes a point every summer when the tomatoes start winning.

The kitchen counter is full, another basket is waiting in the garden, and you’ve already canned enough tomatoes and tomato sauce to get through winter. That’s usually when I start looking for something different to do with them.

Homemade ketchup is one of those recipes.

I’ll warn you right now: making ketchup from fresh tomatoes isn’t particularly fast. You’re going to peel tomatoes, simmer them down, run them through a food mill, and then simmer them some more.

But that’s also what makes it good.

This is thick, old-fashioned tomato ketchup made from ripe tomatoes, onions, vinegar, sugar, and whole spices. It tastes like tomatoes instead of a bottle of corn syrup with a little tomato mixed in.

And when the garden is producing tomatoes faster than your family can eat them, ketchup is another way to put some of that harvest on the pantry shelf.

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Canning Homemade Ketchup | sugar free | DIY | Homemade | Preserving Tomatoes | LivinLovinFarmin

A Note About This Ketchup Recipe

My original homemade ketchup recipe was written years ago as a lower-sugar alternative to store-bought ketchup.

I’ve since changed the recipe.

Canning isn’t the place where I want to guess. Tomatoes sit close enough to the line between high- and low-acid foods that the proportions of tomatoes, vegetables, and acid matter when you’re processing them in a water bath canner.

This version follows the tested National Center for Home Food Preservation Tomato Ketchup recipe for the ingredient proportions and canning process.

That means I’m not reducing the vinegar, adding extra onions, or removing the sugar to create my own shelf-stable version.

You can find the original tested recipe through the National Center for Home Food Preservation.

What Makes Homemade Ketchup Different?

If you’re expecting homemade ketchup to taste exactly like the bottle you buy at the grocery store, it won’t.

And I think that’s a good thing.

Homemade ketchup has a deeper tomato flavor. The cider vinegar gives it some tang, while cinnamon, cloves, allspice, celery seed, and cayenne give it that familiar ketchup flavor without making it taste overly spiced.

The other big difference is texture.

Commercial ketchup is engineered to be perfectly smooth and identical from bottle to bottle. Homemade ketchup has a little more character. Running it through a food mill gives you a beautifully smooth sauce, but it still tastes like something that came out of your garden.

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What Are the Best Tomatoes for Homemade Ketchup?

Use fully ripe, good-quality tomatoes without signs of spoilage.

If I have plenty of paste tomatoes, such as Roma or San Marzano types, I’ll reach for those first. They contain more flesh and less water, which means less time standing over the stove waiting for your ketchup to thicken.

That doesn’t mean you can’t use slicing tomatoes.

If your garden is overflowing with big slicers, use them. Just expect the ketchup to take longer to cook down because you’re starting with more water.

This is also a good recipe for using a mixture of tomato varieties from the garden.

What I wouldn’t use are tomatoes that are moldy, rotten, frost-damaged, or well past their prime. Canning is not a way to rescue spoiled produce.

Canning Homemade Ketchup

Yield: approximately 6 to 7 pints
Print Recipe
Ingredients Equipment Method Notes

Ingredients
  

  • 24 pounds ripe tomatoes
  • 3 cups chopped onions
  • 3/4 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
  • 3 cups apple cider vinegar 5% acidity
  • 4 teaspoons whole cloves
  • 3 cinnamon sticks crushed
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons whole allspice
  • 3 tablespoons celery seeds
  • 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
  • 1/4 cup salt

Equipment

  • Large Stockpot
  • Water Bath Canner
  • Pint Canning Jars
  • Food Mill or Sieve
  • Spice Bag or Cheesecloth
  • Jar Lifter
  • Canning Funnel

Method
 

. Prepare the Tomatoes
  1. Wash the tomatoes thoroughly.
  2. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and prepare a bowl or sink of cold water.
  3. Lower the tomatoes into boiling water for about 30 to 60 seconds, or just until the skins begin to split. Transfer them immediately to the cold water.
  4. The skins should slip off easily.
  5. Remove the cores, peel the tomatoes, and cut them into quarters.
Cook the Tomatoes and Onions
  1. Place the prepared tomatoes in a large stockpot.
  2. Add the chopped onions and cayenne pepper.
  3. Bring everything to a boil, then simmer uncovered for 20 minutes.
  4. Cover the pot, turn off the heat, and allow the mixture to stand for another 20 minutes.
Prepare the Spiced Vinegar
  1. While the tomatoes are resting, place the cloves, crushed cinnamon sticks, allspice, and celery seeds into a spice bag or tie them securely in cheesecloth.
  2. Pour the 5% apple cider vinegar into a saucepan and add the spice bag.
  3. Bring the vinegar to a boil.
  4. Remove the spice bag and discard the spices.
  5. Now you have all that warm spice flavor infused into the vinegar without little pieces of clove and celery seed floating around in your ketchup.
Combine and Cook
  1. Pour the seasoned vinegar into the tomato mixture.
  2. Bring it back to a boil and cook for approximately 30 minutes.
  3. At this point, the tomatoes should be very soft.
Run the Ketchup Through a Food Mill
  1. Run the hot tomato mixture through a food mill or fine sieve.
  2. This removes seeds and any remaining bits of skin while creating the smooth texture we want in ketchup.
  3. Return the tomato mixture to your stockpot.
Add the Sugar and Salt
  1. Stir in the sugar and salt.
  2. Bring the ketchup to a gentle boil and continue cooking, stirring frequently, until the volume has reduced by approximately half.
  3. Don’t rush this part.
  4. As the ketchup gets thicker, it can scorch surprisingly quickly. Turn the heat down if necessary and stir more often toward the end.
Canning Homemade Ketchup
  1. Prepare your water bath canner and clean pint jars according to current safe home-canning practices.
  2. Ladle the hot ketchup into hot pint jars, leaving 1/8 inch headspace.
  3. Remove any trapped air bubbles and adjust the headspace if necessary.
  4. Wipe the jar rims clean, center the lids, and apply the bands until fingertip tight.
  5. Place the jars into the boiling water bath canner and process according to your elevation.

Notes

How Do You Know When Homemade Ketchup Is Thick Enough?

This is probably the part of ketchup making that requires the most patience.
You’re looking for a thick sauce that mounds or rounds up slightly on a spoon without watery liquid separating from the tomato mixture.
Depending on the tomatoes you started with, reducing the ketchup can take a while.
Watery slicing tomatoes will naturally take longer than meaty paste tomatoes.
Don’t try to shortcut the process by adding flour, cornstarch, or another thickener. Let evaporation do the work.
Tip text

Homemade Ketchup Canning at a Glance

QuestionAnswer
Tomatoes24 pounds
Vinegar3 cups apple cider vinegar, 5% acidity
Jar sizePints
Headspace1/8 inch
Canning methodBoiling water bath
Processing time15–25 minutes, depending on altitude
YieldApproximately 6–7 pints

Is Making Ketchup Worth It?

I’m not going to pretend homemade ketchup is the quickest way to preserve 24 pounds of tomatoes.

It isn’t.

If efficiency is your only goal, can tomato sauce.

But there’s something satisfying about opening the pantry in January and finding jars of condiments you made from tomatoes that came out of your own garden.

We use ketchup all year long. Burgers, meatloaf, fried potatoes, scrambled eggs, barbecue sauce and plenty of other recipes eventually have us reaching for a bottle.

Making it yourself turns one more grocery-store staple into something you can put away during harvest season.

And that is really why I can in the first place.

I’m not trying to recreate the grocery store in my kitchen.

I’m trying to make good use of what we grow while it’s abundant.

FAQ

Not in the shelf-stable version I’m giving you here. This recipe follows a tested home-canning formulation, and I don’t recommend changing the ingredient proportions and then using the same canning instructions.

If you want to experiment with a sugar-free homemade ketchup, make it as a refrigerator or freezer ketchup rather than assuming it can be safely canned using these directions.

For this particular recipe, I use the 5% cider vinegar called for in the tested formulation. Whatever vinegar you’re using for home canning, pay attention to the acidity listed on the bottle. Don’t use homemade vinegar or vinegar of unknown acidity for a recipe relying on vinegar for safe acidification.

The tested processing directions are written for pint jars. I prefer sticking with the jar size specified in the tested recipe rather than making up a different processing time.

Not if you’re planning to water bath can this ketchup using these processing instructions.

Onions are a low-acid ingredient. Increasing the amount changes the formulation of the recipe. Save the experimenting for ketchup you’re going to refrigerate or freeze.

Dried herbs and spices offer more room for flavor adjustment than changing the quantities of tomatoes, onions, or vinegar. I still wouldn’t start throwing extra fresh vegetables into the pot.

I’d rather make two batches.

Twenty-four pounds of tomatoes already makes a substantial batch of ketchup, and an oversized batch takes much longer to reduce. Working in the tested batch size also makes it easier to maintain the intended ingredient proportions.

It probably needs more time.

Tomatoes vary tremendously in water content. Keep the ketchup at a gentle boil and stir frequently until enough liquid has evaporated and the ketchup holds together on a spoon without watery separation.

One Last Canning Note

Home canning recommendations change as research improves, so I always recommend checking a current research-based source before beginning.

For this recipe, the safety-critical ingredient proportions, headspace, jar size, and processing times come from the National Center for Home Food Preservation's tested Tomato Ketchup recipe, which was adapted from USDA home-canning guidance.

There's plenty of room for creativity in a homestead kitchen.

The canner isn't where I use it.

Jar Storage

Once your jars are completely cool and you’ve checked the seals, remove the rings, label each jar, and move it to a cool, dark pantry. I like using stackable canning jar storage boxes to keep my canned goods organized and protected. The dividers keep the jars from knocking together, and the boxes make it much easier to move jars around when the pantry starts filling up during canning season.

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8 Comments

  1. This recipe sounds delicious! Could you recommend a headspace measurement and water bath time if I wanted to can this in half-pint jars? We don’t use that much ketchup and I’m afraid a pint would go bad before we could use it all.
    Thank you!

    Reply

  2. I’m missing something here… 267 calories a serving? Like how much is a serving- a jar? A tablespoon? That just seems so high.

    Reply

    1. The serving size and calories is automatically calculated by a app. The app doesn’t consider that the ingredients are homegrown and sugar/preservative free. Honestly I pay little to no attention to its automated “data”. I will look into how to turn it off.

      Reply

  3. Hi could the honey be left out or substituted possibly with dates/date syrup or would this compromise it’s shelf life?

    Thanks!

    Reply

  4. I am planning on canning tomorrow but would like to use Himalayan Pink Salt instead of canning salt. Is this possible? Do you have the weight of your canning salt requirement instead of tablespoon measurement?

    Thanks

    Reply