How Labor Intensive is it to Make Your Own Catsup (Ketchup?)

Last Friday I bought 43 pounds of gorgeous tomatoes from a local gardener. My intent was to be really scientific and find out how many pints of ketchup would I get from that amount of tomatoes. This time I did not peel the tomatoes. I quartered them, cut the blossom end off and started filling my largest stock pot. I ended up filling both my largest and medium sized stock pots. I'm not sure how many quarts each pot holds, let's just say it was a lot of tomatoes. At 10:30 a.m. I turned on the burners beneath both pots and brought them up to a just barely noticeable boil. I turned the heat to low and switched on the "simmer" buttons.

For the next 11 hours I stirred and boiled down the tomatoes. During this time, my mom came over and looked at me like I had lost my marbles, but, bless her heart, didn't say so. I then informed her that this was an experiment. A cooking experiment. That caught her attention. You see, since half of my genetic code comes from her I hooked her with the fact that I was doing research. Yeah. This is the lady who purchased the 1966 set of World Book encyclopedias for us so we could have somewhere to go to "look things up." (You know this was before "google" was a twinkle in anyone's eye.) Also this is the lady who has more cookbooks than God. This kind of stuff just runs through some of us.

Anyway, back to my experiment. For the next 6 hours I simmered and stirred until the tomato was reduced. The peels and seeds were still in the pots. A few days ago I purchased a huge spoon shaped strainer that has a handle one it. I used it to strain most of the seeds and peels out of the tomato. I would just hold the strainer over the pot with my left hand and use a spoon with my right hand to slowly move the tomato mixture around inside the strainer. The ketchup mixture would fall through the holes in the strainer and the seeds and peels would stay in the strainer/colander and I could just dispose of them.

When the mixture had reduced by a third, I started flavoring the tomato mixture. I added brown sugar, honey, granulated sugar, vinegar, garlic powder, onion powder, allspice, and cloves. All of this was to taste. Then the mixture cooked and bubbled on the stove until it was reduced to half of it's original content. All this time, I was stirring to keep the ketchup from burning. (Now I need to invent a handy dandy automatic stirrer that will fit multiple sized pans.) Standing at the stove for 11 hours definitely put a crimp and a cramp in my back. By the time I had finished with the reducing part of it---the sky was dark and it was 9:30 p.m. Time to go to bed.

The next morning was Sunday. I knew another long day was ahead of me. I turned on the burner beneath the ketchup (In my family we have a running joke that we turn things on by whispering " I Love You." This joke has been a constant for 40 or so years.) So, everytime I mention that I turned something on, my head says "I whispered I love you." So, I turned the burner on beneath the ketchup and got it simmering. I then washed and sterilized the jars (What did we do before dishwashers?) Sterilizing the jars is so easy. Just pop them into the dishwasher, turn it on to sani-rinse and wait.

When the jars were finished sani-rinsing I opened the dishwasher door and started filling the hot jars with hot ketchup. Did I mention that by this time all the ketchup was now divided between the medium size and smallest stock pots. I started the waterbath canning operation in the big stockpot. I waterbath canned the jars for 15 minutes and let them cool on a large bath towel that I had spread out on the kitchen counter. Every one of them did their sealing "pop." By the time I was done I had 17 pints of homemade (with love) ketchup. The conclusion? 43 pounds of tomatoes=17 pints of ketchup.

By the time I was finished it was late afternoon on Sunday. Remember I bought the 43 pounds on Friday, started slicing the tomatoes early Saturday morning, started reducing the tomatoes at 10:30 a.m. Saturday morning, stirred and reduced all day Saturday, turned off the stove at 9:30 p.m. Saturday night. Sani-rinsed the jars on Sunday morning, filled the jars with ketchup and waterbath canned through the day Sunday, finishing early Sunday evening. On Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and part of Thursday, I was ill. When I was younger I had tons and tons of energy and could do anything I wanted with no physical repurcussions. 'Tis not that way anymore. Once I hit 40 it all started going downhill. However, I still think it was worth the work and the look on my mom's face when I told her the conclusion of my experiment.