Canning Ketchup
Canning ketchup is a great way to preserve summer flavors and enjoy them throughout the year.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to canning ketchup. You’re about to taste the best-tasting ketchup you’ve ever had.
Why can ketchup at home?
- Control the ingredients: You can control the ingredients and avoid unnecessary additives. It allows you to customize the recipe to suit your tastes.
- Taste: You’re about to taste the best-tasting ketchup you’ve ever had.
- Sustainability: It allows you to preserve the flavors of fresh, ripe tomatoes when they’re in season and enjoy them throughout the year. It reduces food waster by using all of the tomatoes in your garden and saving on plastic use and shipping pollution of store-bought varieties.
- Cost savings: Store-bought ketchup has gotten quite expensive. Making your own can save a lot of money on your grocery bill, especially if you have a garden or a farmers’ market to buy tomatoes in bulk.
- Gifts: Your friends and family’s faces will light up when they see this ketchup in a gift basket.
What types of tomatoes are best?
Whatever tomato you have on hand will work. But, when making ketchup, the best tomatoes are meaty, low in water content, and high in natural sweetness and acidity, like Roma and San Marzano.
What you need
- Tomatoes: Fresh, ripe tomatoes are the star ingredient in ketchup. You can use any meaty tomato.
- Onion: Onion adds a savory depth of flavor to ketchup. Yellow onions are the most commonly used, but you could also use white onions.
- Garlic: Garlic adds a pungent, aromatic flavor to ketchup.
- Vinegar: Add vinegar to balance the sweetness of the tomatoes and add tanginess to the ketchup. White vinegar, apple cider vinegar, or red wine vinegar are good options.
- Sugar: Sugar adds sweetness to the ketchup and helps balance the acidity. You can use granulated sugar, brown sugar, or honey, depending on your preference.
- Salt: Use as a flavor enhancer for the ketchup.
- Spices: Ground cinnamon, allspice, cloves, cayenne, celery seed, and black pepper can add depth and complexity to the ketchup. Worcestershire sauce, mustard powder, and paprika are also popular additions.
How to make it
Chop the onion and mince the garlic.
Break up cinnamon into pieces. Use a hammer or meat mallet to crush it.
Add spices to a spice bag.
Use a reusable produce bag or make one out of a few layers of cheesecloth.
Some of the celery seeds may fall out, which is fine.
Add ingredients to the tomato juice. Submerse the spice bag in the liquid.
Mix it well. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a low boil and cook the sauce for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Turn the heat down to a high simmer and cook until it is thick.
Remove the spice bag after 15-30 minutes. Taste it before you remove it to see if you can taste these spices. Remove it when you like the taste.
Use an immersion blender to puree the onions and garlic until smooth.
You can also do this with a stand blender in batches.
Fill the hot jars with hot ketchup with a canning funnel leaving a ½-inch headspace.
Remove the bubbles with a bubble tool or a plastic or wooden chopstick.
Wipe the rims of the jars with a damp paper towel to remove debris.
Center lid on jar. Screw bands fingertip tight.
Place jars in your canning pot. Be sure the water covers them by about 2 inches.
Notice we have a clean kitchen towel in the pot. We didn’t use our canning pot, just a tall pot, and added the towel to keep the jars off of the bottom of the pot.
This is convenient when small batch canning so you don’t have to drag out your canning pot.
Get the canner water hot. Wash the jars and lids. Add the clean jars to the canning pot to heat. Once the jars are filled, add them to the canning pot. Bring the water in the pot to a boil. Once the water is boiling, set the timer.
When the processing time is complete, remove the pot from the heat, carefully open the lid, and partially lift it off the top of the canning pot. Let it rest like that for 5 minutes.
Then, remove the lid and let the jars rest in the canning pot for an additional 5 to 10 minutes.
After resting, remove the jars onto a kitchen towel placed on your counter and let them thoroughly cool for 12-24 hours, undisturbed. You may hear the lids pinging sometime in the next hour. This is music to a canner’s ears. It is due to the reaction of the lids being sealed to the jar.
Check the seals. Press down in the middle of the lid. If it flexes up or down, the jar is not sealed and should be refrigerated and used first.
Then, remove the bands. Gently pick up the jar by the lid to check the seal further. Again, if it is not sealed, use it first.
Label jars with contents and the date. Store in a cool, dark place for at least a year. Avoid areas with large temperature fluctuations.
Do not stack jars on top of each other. This can compromise the seals. If you run out of room on your shelf, use a sheet of cardboard or a thin piece of wood and place that on top of a row of jars. Then you can put jars on top of that. This will distribute the weight evenly.
Before using any canned goods, always inspect the packaging and the food itself. Make sure that it looks and smells as it should. If it doesn’t, it’s best to err on the side of caution and discard it.
The National Center for Home Food Preservation and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture. All of the recipes on this site are based on one or both of these trusted sources. We just do a more thorough job showing you how to do it, step-by-step.
New to canning? Start with our comprehensive article on “How to Can Everything“. It will walk you through all of the dos and don’ts related to canning.
Storing Ketchup
Store canned ketchup in a cool, dark place like a basement, root cellar or cupboard. If you don’t want to can it, it can be frozen in airtight containers in the freezer for about one year.
Ketchup can be stored in the refrigerator for about 3 months.
Uses for Ketchup
- Topping for hamburgers and hot dogs: Ketchup is a classic topping for grilled burgers and hot dogs and adds a sweet and tangy flavor.
- As a dipping sauce for fries and onion rings: Ketchup is a famous dipping sauce for crispy, salty snacks like french fries, onion rings, and chicken nuggets.
- As an ingredient in meatloaf and meatballs: Ketchup is often used as an ingredient in meatloaf and meatball recipes, adding moisture and flavor.
Helpful Tools
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More Pantry Staples
Don’t have time to make ketchup during the growing season? Freeze them and pull out a bag any time of the year and can it then.
Once you try this homemade ketchup, we’re sure you won’t return to store-bought. it is that good.
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I hope you enjoyed the recipe today.
Enjoy. And have fun cooking!
Canning Ketchup
Ingredients
- 13 pounds tomatoes
- 1½ cups onion
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1½ cups cider vinegar
- ¼ teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
- 2 teaspoons whole cloves
- 1 stick cinnamon
- ¾ teaspoon whole allspice
- 1½ tablespoons celery seed
- ¾ cups sugar
- 2 tablespoons salt
Instructions
Blanching and Food mill to skin and remove seeds
- Start a large pot of water over high heat boiling. Set up another large bowl with ice water.13 pounds tomatoes
- Once water is boiling, remove cores from tomatoes.
- With a slotted spoon, add small batches of tomatoes to the boiling water. Boil for about 2 minutes. Using the same spoon, pull tomatoes out of the boiling water and add to bowl with ice water.
- Working one at a time, slip skins off of tomatoes.
- Use the food mill to remove the seeds.
Juicer strainer attachment for Kitchenaid mixer
- Wash and core tomatoes. Cut into chunks large enough to fit through the hopper. Process the chunks of tomatoes with another large bowl or pot to collect the juices.
For both methods
- Add collected juice to large pot. Bring to boil.
- Chop the onion and mince the garlic. Add them to the tomato juice.1½ cups onion, 2 cloves garlic
- Add the cloves, allspice, celery seed, and crushed cinnamon stick to a spice bag, or make a spice bag from cheesecloth. Add the spice bag, vinegar, cayenne, sugar, and salt to the juice. Bring it to a boil.1½ cups cider vinegar, ¼ teaspoon ground cayenne pepper, 2 teaspoons whole cloves, 1 stick cinnamon, ¾ teaspoon whole allspice, 1½ tablespoons celery seed, ¾ cups sugar, 2 tablespoons salt
- Once boiling, reduce heat. At a low boil, cook down ketchup by about half, to desired consistency, stirring it occasionally, usually at least 40 minutes.
- Once the ketchup is cooked down, and rounds up on a spoon without separation, ladle sauce into your hot jars, using a canning funnel to avoid spills. Leave ½ inch headspace.
- Remove air bubbles with bubble tool or knife.
- Wipe rim of the jar with damp paper towel or clean kitchen towel. Place hot lids on jars. Screw on the bands until fingertip tight.
- Process pint jars 15 minutes, depending on elevation. Remove from heat. (See adjustment for altitudate in the notes below) Allowjars to sit in hot water an additional 5 minutes.
- Remove jars from canning pot using a jar lifter to avoid burns. Allow to rest on counter for 24 hours. Test lids for seal. (press lids in center, if they flex up and down, store that jar in the refrigerator.
- Store in a cool, dark place for at least 1 year.
See all of my favorite tools and gift ideas on my New Amazon Store!Check out Binky’s Amazon Store!Notes
- 0-1000 feet above sea level – 15 minutes.
- 1000-6000 feet above sea level – 20 minutes
- above 6000 feet – 250 minutes
Nutrition
Originally published March 30, 2023. Updated February 28, 2025.
Hi do you know how many cups of the tomato juice it is and not pounds? I have already processed my tomatoes and have a huge pot to make stuff.
Thank you
The recipe is about 26-30 cups of juice.
Is it safe to lower the amount of sugar asked for in this recipe and things like BBQ sauce? I tend to like my condiments a little less sweet.
Are you able to use this homemade ketchup in other canning recipes that call for ketchup?
Thank you!
You can reduce the sugar without affecting the safety. You can also use it for BBQ sauce or any other recipe that calls for ketchup.