I want to make some ketchup/sauce but unsure about bottling safety?

Angelina-M

Good Morning all.

I want to make some ketchup or sauce base with a load of tomatoes I have but I keep reading about safety when bottling and all sorts of bacteria that can lurk. Now i'm a long term jam maker but apparently thats different because of the sugar preserving it.

Anyhoo, what I had in mind was to roast some tomatoes,carrot for sweetness, onion and garlic with a few herbs, then blitz it all in my blender (I hate throwing the skin/seeds away so want to incorporate those) I will add a bit of balsamic/sugar if needed then into my sterilized jars and the jobs a good un for up to a year.... or am I sadly mistaken?

Please look over the above if you get chance and see what you think? I looked in the archives but that mainly covers ketchup that is de-skinned and seeded and I don't want to do that

Thanks guys

Wills106

As long as your jars are sterilised the same way as when you make jam and the ingredients are hot enough to be pasteurised before going in I don't see a problem.
Just the same as jam really.

Angelina-M

Wills106 wrote: »

As long as your jars are sterilised the same way as when you make jam and the ingredients are hot enough to be pasteurised before going in I don't see a problem.
Just the same as jam really.

Brilliant, thank you.

I think sometimes, too much information can be a bad thing. I was looking around for advice last night and read many horror stories about what can occur with canning. I've always just boiled stuff, put it in jars and been happy!

Gigervamp

Not the same as jam because tomatoes, if not stored correctly, can cause bottulism.

In the River Cottage Preserves book, the recipe for ketchup makes 500-600ml, and 100ml of that is vinegar. The vinegar helps to preserve, but it still only has a 4 month shelf life, unless you use the hot waterbath method to pasteurise the ketchup after pouring into your sterilised bottles.

Angelina-M

Gigervamp wrote: »

Not the same as jam because tomatoes, if not stored correctly, can cause bottulism.

In the River Cottage Preserves book, the recipe for ketchup makes 500-600ml, and 100ml of that is vinegar. The vinegar helps to preserve, but it still only has a 4 month shelf life, unless you use the hot waterbath method to pasteurise the ketchup after pouring into your sterilised bottles.

Thank you, yes that's more or less what I read. What did we do in the old days! I have a steam oven and i'm wondering if I can do canning with it. I shall look into it because I do want to make loads to last over winter.

kippers

Have you thought of freezing portions to defrost when you need them instead?

Angelina-M

kippers wrote: »

Have you thought of freezing portions to defrost when you need them instead?

That would be so much easier, and my preferred method. However I can't fit a single thing more into my freezer! I have about five shelves taken up with the blackberries i'm freezing for smoothies throughout the winter months, the other two shelves have my bruised banana's in that the supermarket were selling off cheap.. I need a chest freezer!

This is beginning to be a hassle. I think i'm just going to have to follow HFW ketchup recipe but its really not what I wanted. Canning/bottling seems like a bit of a pain.

Angelina-M

Well I ended up making the Jamie Oliver tomato ketchup, but as I had wasted a lot of time researching it I ended up running out of time and chucking the half finished recipe in the slow cooker overnight.

Its very thick and delicious this morning so I think I'm going to give it a shot at bottling it up. Fingers crossed it will keep well!

sandraroffey

i made the Jamie Oliver recipe too. its fabulous. takes a bit of time if you are making lots, (which we did), but well worth the effort. just make sure that bottles and jars are sterilised and mine kept for ages. and gets better when its been kept a while too.

Angelina-M

sandraroffey wrote: »

i made the Jamie Oliver recipe too. its fabulous. takes a bit of time if you are making lots, (which we did), but well worth the effort. just make sure that bottles and jars are sterilised and mine kept for ages. and gets better when its been kept a while too.

Thank you that's good to hear. Mine is bottled now. I put the sterilized bottles in the steam oven once full of ketchup and left it to run for an hour. Once the bottles came out, the tops all popped down within half an hour so I'm hoping all will be well.

I am roasting some more tomatoes and garlic now and I shall blend them and give them the same treatment. However there won't be any vinegar to help preserve them as I want to use for pizza/pasta sauce so I shall need to keep my eye on these. Saying that, I expect to use these ones up within a month or so.

Mojisola

Angelina-M wrote: »

I am roasting some more tomatoes and garlic now and I shall blend them and give them the same treatment. However there won't be any vinegar to help preserve them as I want to use for pizza/pasta sauce so I shall need to keep my eye on these. Saying that, I expect to use these ones up within a month or so.

You can't taste or smell botulism which, though rare, is very nasty.

Here's a cheerful poster on the subject -
https://www.nwedible.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/botulism3.pdf