Heirloom Tomato Bourbon Ketchup

I’ve been trying to make ketchup that I like for a while now, trying all sorts of different recipes. I keep making perfectly fine red sauce, but it didn’t taste like ketchup to me. So then I’d can it and when we’d open it, we’d use it once and forget it until it got moldy. Then we fed it to the pigs. What a waste of perfectly good tomatoes and lots of time! But I kept trying. I like ketchup on lots of things, far more than Frank, so I was determined to find one I like. This one is pretty good! (I started with this recipe, and added a few things and changed a few things, of course.)

6 pounds random heirloom tomatoes, frozen and then held under hot water to get the skins off (core them before you freeze them)
5 carrots
2 parsnips
1 cup chopped onions
3 cloves garlic, diced
1 red bell pepper
dark brown sugar – 1/2 cup
salt – 1 tsp
paprika – 1 tsp
cider vinegar – 2/3 cup
Spices in cheese cloth:
– 1/2 of a cinnamon stick
– mustard seed – 3/4 tsp
– whole allspice – 1 tsp
– celery seed – 1 tsp
– 1 bay leaf
– black peppercorns – 1 tsp

I put that in the crockpot on low, with the lid on, for about four hours.

Then I pulled the spice bag out and hit it with a stick blender.

Then I simmered it on low overnight.

It was really tasty but too thick. I figured I’d just use it as a tomato paste or pizza sauce, but then I remembered something my grandmother told me. You can save many things with the addition of a little bourbon.

It’s really good! We had it on grass-fed burgers with a thick slice of a just picked Peche Jaune heirloom tomato, my very favorite, and the last of last year’s homemade pickles.