Tuesday 17 March 2015

Blending and Sieving

If you'd asked me a year ago if I was the sort of woman who made her own soups I'd have said occasionally, usually with the children at a weekend. 

If you'd asked me if I would make my own ketchup, I probably would have laughed at you!  But this week that is what I've done, and apart from being a bit time consuming, it's easy.

As I'm trying to cut down the hidden sugars in our food, I knew I was going to have to try and make ketchup.  I didn't hold out much hope for it, but when I saw it in Davina's 5 Weeks To Sugar Free I thought it must be possible, and so yesterday afternoon I decided to make a batch to have with our homemade burgers:

http://ow.ly/KqOIf

I followed Davina's recipe exactly and made ketchup!

You will need to allow yourself about 2 hours to make this, and then time for it to cool down, (although, it's actually quite nice warm) and you will need to sterilise a bottle to keep it in.



Now it doesn't taste the same as the shop bought varieties, it's, obviously, nowhere near as sweet, it is thick, and gloopy and yummy.  L liked it!  Yep, that's right L who doesn't like sauce liked this ketchup, I was a very happy mummy last night.




This afternoon I have yet again been at the stove, making tomato soup, like I said before, I have made soups in the past and the reason I've made it today is because we're having stew tomorrow and normally I would put a couple of tins in that, but there is a lot of sugar in tinned tomato soup and so thought I'd have a go at making my own.  I researched a few recipes and blended them to come up with this:

Ingredients:

                  About 1kg tomatoes (roughly 10)

                  1 large carrot, grated

                  2 small red onions

                 600ml of vegetable stock

                 1 bulb of garlic


Method:

                 Chop your tomatoes in half, and place them on an oiled oven tray and scatter with whole cloves of garlic.  Put in the oven on gas mark 5 for about 45 minutes.

                 Fry your onions and grated carrot until soft, then add the vegetable stock to the frying pan and simmer for about 5 minutes.

                 Allow both your tomatoes and your stock to cool slightly before continuing.



                 If using a blender with a pulp catcher you can put everything in through that and blitz, if using a hand blender you'll need to squeeze your garlic pulp out of the skins first.

                 Depending upon how smooth the blender has gotten your soup you may feel you want to sieve it, I did as I could still see the odd bit of garlic and wanted a really smooth soup.



I have divided my soup into two containers, one for the hubby to have re-heated and to take to work, and one to put into our stew tomorrow.

I tasted the soup myself, and it's really nice.  Now I don't like tinned tomato soup, I think it tastes really sweet and artificial, but I would eat a bowl of this.

Lupin Girl x

                



               


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