cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/28480950
In 2015, Cookie Monster filmed a viral video titled “Simply Delicious Shower Thoughts with Cookie Monster” for the Mashable YouTube channel. In the video, he explores various New York City museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim, while pondering deep “shower thoughts” about food.


Ketchup is a fruit butter, not a jam.
Cooked, pureed fruit with sugar and spices, no pectin. Not a jam
Like…melted butter?
Not sure if joking so I’ll answer seriously…
Like apple butter, or pear butter. Maybe it’s an Appalachian thing, I dunno. You chop up the fruit, let’s say apples, and slow cook them for a few hours. Then puree them, add cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, whatever, and a bunch of sugar. Can the results. We always used small mason jars that had been in the family for God only knows how long.
Grandma wouldn’t use a blender, she was old school. She’d add all the ingredients together in a big stock pot, drop a silver dollar in the bottom, and stir for hours, until she couldn’t hear the coin move around anymore. I say she stirred for hours, but she’d “enlist” the help of the kids, and later, daughters-in-law, and eventually grandchildren. She was born in 1912, so I reckon it was just her way
So to make ketchup, aka a fruit butter, we must first milk the tomatoes, then separate the cream, then churn the tomato cream, then separate the tomato buttermilk.
I had no idea so much went into ketchup.
Tomato butter is a little different, after you separate the tomato buttercream and add seasoning and vinegar, add back the tomato buttercream until the consistency is where you like it