Nobody Wants Your Homemade Ketchup
Hello and welcome back toWhat’s Cooking? , an open thread where you can share your brilliant thoughts, tips, recipes and opinions on all food related matters. This week, I’m using my platform to talk about something I think is a disaster in grilling season – homemade or fancy ketchup.
I’m not talking about the Fancy Ketchup packages you get at McDonald’s; this is normal. I’m talking about too thick, too tomato, not enough sweet ketchup, which people seem to insist on making and bringing to outdoor dinners. (I have to admit that I did it when I was in my early twenties to impress others. Nobody cared about that.) And it’s not just the home cooks who are to blame. I can’t tell you how many establishments there are in Portland – not even the so-called “dive bars”! – insist on serving fries with quirky, artisanal, overly tomato ketchup, but I can tell you how much I hate it. I really hate this.
Ketchup is not something to be upgraded. Commercially produced ketchup is an excellent condiment and is a genre of its own. Ketchup, although it contains tomatoes, has no tomato flavor; no, it’s ketchup flavored. It should be sweet (HFCS is non-negotiable in my opinion), spicy and incredibly bland. Homemade ketchup rarely consists of all of this (or any of it to the proper extent), and I wish people would stop making it.
Anyway. I’d love to hear your thoughts on homemade and fashionable ketchup (assuming they align with my own beliefs), but let’s take this opportunity to talk about the state of condiments in general. As always, I have questions:
- What seasoning should you make yourself? Mayonnaise is the only seasoning I usually make myself and then make duck fat mayonnaise .
- Do you have a favorite brand of ketchup? HEINZ.
- Are you for or against Miracle Whip? Miracle Whip is not good and I don’t like it.
- Let’s talk about mayonnaise: does Hellman’s really do the best? I’m more like the duke’s girl, but most of the mayonnaise is fine.
- What should and shouldn’t be put in a hot dog? I know everyone disrespectfully disagrees, but I love the trinity of ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise. I started eating hot dogs this way when I was about eight years old, and I’m not going to stop just because society isn’t ready.
- What do you spread on hamburger buns? Mayonnaise and / or mustard, depending on your mood. In this context, ketchup is meant for fries.
- Did you make the mustard yourself? Has this influenced your life in any way? I don’t remember this experience very well.
- How about barbecue sauce? According to the countess herself, what was bought in the store is normal.
- How many hot sauces do you have in your fridge right now? Who are they? I have four – Huy Fong sriracha, Trappey’s Louisiana, some unusual Portland haunted pepper brand that someone gave me (and I will never use it), and a jar of olek sambal.
- What seasonings do you like to mix? In college, my friend Matt and I used to put ketchup and mustard on a plate side by side and then gently toss each individual fried potato through them, never mixing them completely. Each bite had a different ratio of sweet to aggressive vinegar. It was good.
As usual, feel free to leave any rambling conversations related to our topic on hand, even if they don’t directly answer the questions above, and especially if they are anti-bizarre reasoning about ketchup. I’m a big fan of them.