Pickleers, today, inside Whole Paycheck, I was made to, by internal command of provenance unknown, reach out and grab a bag of the store-brand Tater Pops (read: tater tots). Normally, I don't eat many potato products (or hot dogs, or eggs, or anything else that likes the stuff). But these things are a really fun way to enjoy our ketchup!
For the rest of y'all, we ferment together tomato paste, maple syrup, fish sauce, spices, and living vinegar. After three days (it's technically a chutney, high sugar levels), it's ready. And it keeps for a couple years, slowly maturing. Lately, I've been mixing in lime and Worcestershire sauce or lime and chile powder, to make a Tex-Mex kicker. Got some chipotle chiles? Get ready for a mouth-party!
One of the things we love about our fermented ketchup is that we're the ones sweetening it. I like to take some with me when we go out for burgers and fries (in an old spice bottle without the shaker top, perfect pocket size and easy to fill, and then serve, with a knife). But we don't always have that luxury, so we talked about how Hunt's (vs. Heinz) doesn't use High Fructose Corn Syrup when we were putting the last batch together. Well, that's changed. And they were kinda quiet about this for some reason...
Here's the link, on a great site I may add: http://consumerist.com/2013/01/30/hunts-manages-to-sneak-high-fructose-corn-syrup-back-into-its-ketchup-after-2-years-without/
See y'all soon!
