You can make your own Healthy Tomato Ketchup Recipe in just 15 minutes and with a few store cupboard ingredients. Still all the flavour you know and love from ketchup, but lower in salt and sugar (refined sugar free), and much cheaper too! Even better is that you can make your own flavoured ketchup - spicy ketchup anyone?
I think we can all agree that we love sauce. Open up anyone's fridge (I am not the only one that likes looking in other people's fridge am I?) and even if there is no actual food in there, you can bet that the inside door is filled with sauces. Ketchup, mayo, mustard, chutneys - you name it.
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Why you will love it
- Low calorie, low carb, low fat
- Ready in just 15 minutes
- Cheaper and healthier than shop bought ketchup
- Easy to adapt
Ingredients needed
- Passata - This is the base of the ketchup. Passata is tomato that has been pureed and passed through a sieve to make it smooth. It doesn't have any salt added to it either. Basically, it is crushed tomato that has been pureed, but thicker.
- Tomato puree - This helps to thicken it up, and give it a real burst of tomato flavour.
- Apple cider vinegar - This helps the ketchup to keep longer, as it stops the tomatoes from spoiling.
- Honey - Ketchup should have a touch of sweetness, and we use honey to sweeten ours.
- Onion and garlic powder
A full ingredients list with measurements is in the recipe card below.
Step by step
One: Put all of the ingredients in to a pan and mix well. Gently simmer for 15 minutes.
Two: Serve with homemade fries.
Is it easy?
Ketchup is usually the first sauce that people reach for to cover their burger or hotdog, or to dip their chips in to. It's bursting with all that tomato goodness, nice and sweet and kids would happily bathe in the stuff. I know it's convenient to just pick up a bottle off the shelf, but did you know that it is SO easy to make your own at home?! Also, making it yourself reduces the amount of plastic you are buying.
I bet that you probably already have most, if not all, of the ingredients to make this homemade ketchup and you can whip it up in just 15 minutes. Either serve it up in a nice jar, or put it in to an old bottle of ketchup so the kids will never know.
Is it healthy?
I don't need to tell you that store bought sauces are full of weird ingredients. We used just a pinch of sea salt in this recipe (but you could leave it out completely, and it's refined sugar free as we used honey - but you could swap that for maple syrup to keep this vegan.
By making your own homemade ketchup, you can control exactly what goes in to it and don't need to stress over your kids wanting it with every meal.
This tomato ketchup recipe has enough honey to give it a tough of sweetness, but it is not overly sweet. We have made this recipe at least 30 times now (our 2 year old LOVES it) and we think this recipe is pretty perfect (as do a lot of you from the feedback we have received), but feel free to adjust the sweetness if you want it more or less sweet.
Flavoured ketchup
I have never really understood why flavoured ketchup isn't a think. I mean, standard ketchup is pretty awesome, but it could be a base for something even more awesome.
We usually add a different flavour to our homemade ketchup each time and love coming up with different flavoured ketchups.
We have done a garlic heavy version (with both garlic granules and fresh garlic), a chilli version with either a splash of chilli sauce or some chipotle paste, one with some Mexican seasoning mixed in and even a curried version with a sprinkle of curry powder.
Tomato ketchup without sugar
Whilst we used honey instead of refined sugar, honey is still sugar. If you want to make this sauce without any sugar, then you can of course leave it out, but it will taste like something is missing. We have only used a little bit of honey and we find that a little goes a long way.
What to serve ketchup with
I mean, it has to be burgers doesn't it? This homemade ketchup goes perfectly smothered on our Hidden Vegetable Beef Burgers or our Mexican Bean Burgers.
If hotdogs are more your thing, then why not put some on our Hidden Vegetable Beef Burgers? If you are looking for something to dip in this sauce, then it has to be our Garlic Potato Wedges.
FAQs
How to store ketchup often causes arguments in households. Some insist it is kept in the fridge and others keep it in the cupboard. With this homemade ketchup we recommend keeping it in the fridge in a sterilised bottle and it will keep there for about 2 weeks for maximum freshness, but we usually finish ours WAY before that.
Yes, you could use chopped up fresh tomatoes, but this would make it a fresh sauce and it wouldn't have as long a shelf life. You would only be able to keep it in the fridge for about 3 days.
Using fresh tomatoes also gives it a bit more of a salsa taste, rather than a ketchup.
We made ours with passata, as that is what we had on hand, but you could use a couple of cans of plum tomatoes and mash them down whilst cooking. You would then need to blend it, and maybe even sieve it, to get the desired ketchup consistency.
More sauce recipes
If you’ve tried this homemade tomato ketchup recipe, let us know how you got on in the comments below.
Tag us in your creations on Instagram @hungryhealthyhappy - Use the hashtag #hungryhealthyhappy too.
Recipe
Healthy Tomato Ketchup Recipe
Ingredients
- 125 ml (0.5 cups) Passata
- 6 tablespoon Tomato puree
- 60 ml (0.25 cups) Water
- 60 ml (0.25 cups) Apple cider vinegar - (you can use white wine vinegar)
- 2 tablespoon Honey
- 1 teaspoon Onion powder
- 0.5 teaspoon Garlic powder
- 1 pinch Sea salt and black pepper
Instructions
- Put all the ingredients in a pan and mix well.
- Simmer a medium heat for 15 minutes.
Notes
- You can make this ketchup vegan by swapping the honey for maple syrup. You could also not sweeten it at all, but a little sweetness goes a long way in this recipe.
- This recipe will keep in a sterilised bottle in the fridge for a couple of weeks.
- Fancy a flavoured ketchup? Try adding some curry powder, chilli powder or even some roasted garlic to the recipe.
Rebecca
Can the passata be substituted with tomato puree or something else? I do not have easy access to it.
Dannii
If you are in the US, then tomato puree is what we call passata.
Christian
This recipe contains more, sugar, carbs and salt that Heinz No added sugar Ketchup... how can you call it low carb and healthy???
Dannii
This recipe is a healthier version of full sugar ketchup. Also, Heinz no added sugar ketchup is full of artificial sweetener. We have just used a little honey to sweeten it. Healthy is of course a subjective word, but it doesn't just come down to sugar level comparison. We never compared it to a no added sugar ketchup (which tastes horrible in my opinion). This homemade ketchup is delicious. If you give it a go, you will see that is tastes much better, and doesn't have the chemically taste that no added sugar ketchup have. Taste is very important too.
Mark
I whipped this up quickly for some grilled cheese sandwiches, one of about three things I use ketchup on, and it was excellent. I did add a small pinch of white sugar but really didn't need to. I also was eyeing up the garam masala and chipotle powder, then saw the other review saying the same, so I added a small amount of each and it definitely added a bit of zing without overpowering.
Dannii
So glad you enjoyed it. It sounds delicious on a grilled cheese.
Ian
Just tried this, really lovely ketchup. I added a bit of chilli and garam masala, and gently fried some onions and garlic in place of the powders. Only problem was when I realised the tomato puree I used was in a non-recyclable tube. Will do better next time!
Dannii
That sounds like a great addition. I am glad you enjoyed it :)
greg palmer
Oh no!!!(shock horror)-what did you do???