Ketchup, A.K.A. my son's favorite food

My son will put ketchup on anything. Last night, we fed him a hot dog and peanuts for dinner (among other things). He not only dipped his hot dog, but also his peanuts, into the last of the organic ketchup that we had on hand.
We buy organic not because tomatoes have to be organic (we have a list of the fruits and veggies that need to be organic, and those that conventional is just fine). We buy organic ketchup because, it is the only ketchup that does not have HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) in it. (Although I just saw a non-organic brand that says right on the label that it is HFCS free - I don't remember the brand). We try as best as we can to keep it out of our house. Occasionally, it slips in, but for the most part, we are HFCS haters.
Organic Ketchup is expensive, as is most organic food. I vowed that as soon as we ran out of it, I would try to concoct my own HFCF-free stuff. I sputtered out the last of our Ketchup last night, and, as I'm fairly certain that we could not go a day without the stuff, I experimented and made some last night.
Naturally, I had done my research. A google search for "homemade ketchup" yielded many methods for making your own ketchup. They ran the gamut from growing your own tomatoes and cooking them down, to buying tomato sauce and doctoring it up. I decided upon a method that starts with tomato paste. Here's what I did:

I gathered together:

tomato paste -organic does taste better,
but I almost went with hunt's brand.

vinegar (yes, we buy vinegar in bulk - there's very little

that a little vinegar or baking soda won't clean)

brown sugar

and various spices I thought would work

I threw it all in a bowl, mixed, and added some water for the right consistency. I ended putting too much brown sugar in, so I had to overcompensate by adding more vinegar. I ended up adding red wine vinegar, white vinegar, and also rice wine vinegar before I was happy with the level of acidity and sweetness. I bottled it up and put it in the fridge overnight.

This morning, I tried it to see how the flavors had melded and was not really happy. I dumped it back into a bowl and added onion powder and a little sriracha for a little heat.


It turned out super complex and yummy. Not so yummy that I'd be willing to dip my peanuts in it, but definitely worthy of some french fries.