I remember when US ketchup/catsup wasn’t stupid sweet like it is now. Yes, it has always had a little bit of sweetness to offset the acid in the tomatoes. But now it’s primarily sugar-flavor with a hint of tomatoes & spices.
I’m looking for a suggestion for a ketchup/catsup that is not sweet. I don’t mean one that has artificial sweeteners instead of sugar/HFCS/etc. I mean one that doesn’t have sweetness as a major flavor component.
Any ideas? Once I have some brand ideas I/we can figure out how to get some.
I’m 45 and my memory of products like Heinz ketchup tastes the same to me now as it did when I was a kid. I add stuff to it at home. You could start with just adding a little tomato paste. I like combining it with a little mayo and hot sauce. I wonder if you would like something like Heinz 57, or even a barbecue sauce instead of ketchup. I use barbecue sauce on eggs - though I look for either locally made stuff or smaller batch type of makers that don’t put corn syrup in theirs.
There have been mentions recently of non-US ketchup that “isn’t as sweet.” I can’t say I’ve noticed any boost in sweetness, but I do like the sriracha ketchup I found recently. Not only is it not sweet by any standard, but the hot sauce overtone is quite moderate and it’s become my standard red goop.
I wonder if there’s a comparison of sugar content in various ketchups, US and (I guess) European, out there somewhere?
Heinz has a Reduced Sugar Ketchup. I’m not sure what the old version is, but you might start with that one.
A few more seconds of googling, just to check and I see some other brands have ‘no sugar added’ versions of their ketchup. It seems like you should be able to find one of these either at a big box grocery store/Walmart or at least on Amazon.
Per the ingredient list they removed 3/4ths of the added sugar then added artificial sweetener (sucralose) to make it taste just as sweet as their current high-sugar painfully sweet ketchup.
So that’s a double fail for my criteria. But thanks for playing.
Nice idea, but most BBQ sauces are about 1/2 sugar. Yes, you can find a few that aren’t, but it isn’t easy.
The “secret sauce” is sriracha is sugar. It’s just fairly ordinary chili sauce with extra garlic and a boatload of sugar to round off the chili zing.
But thanks to both of you for trying.
It’s truly amazing to me how much incremental sugar has been dumped into our prepared foods in the last 20 years and how many folks, myself included, never really notice(d) until they really start(ed) paying attention.
When I was in high school there was no sugar in most name brand salad dressings. Now most have sugar or sugar substitutes as the primary or secondary ingredient.
The goal remains: find a ketchup that tastes like ketchup did 40+ years ago when it had a teaspoon of sugar per bottle instead of the cup or more it has now.
Yes, I could google it. I was hoping to find someone among our chefs who had actual experience and a personal recommendation for some brand. I’m sorry if I’m coming across as too hard to please.
You keep saying this and I’m sure it’s your memory. I’m like the others here who think you are remembering wrongly. I know of no evidence at all - including histories of ketchup or older homemade ketchup recipes - that shows that the sugar content of ketchup has been markedly increased since 40 years ago, or for that matter 80 years ago.
Shrug. I was commenting on the flavor, not necessarily the ingredients.
No shit. HFCS in particular has been dumped into everything, including stuff that never had any kind of sugar in it to start with, precisely because it hammers a certain taste response even if the quantity is low enough not to register as ‘sweet.’
If you haven’t read Michael Moss’s Salt Sugar Fat… highly recommended. He has high-level people in food conglomerates talking quite casually about all the things they do to hit ‘bliss points’ and up sales - with no regard for nutrition issues at all.
I’m not quite sure this is a genuine statement. As someone said above, ketchup has always been a rather sugary condiment. If you’ve got some kind of evidence or cite that the amount of sugar in ketchup has been increased (despite my comments above - I think ketchup was an early example of sugar-boosting), I’d like to see it.
If it’s about your taste and you want a ketchup that tastes as un-sweet as you think it used to be… different quest.
I have to agree with those who say they haven’t noticed a difference. Ketchup has always been sweet, but my memories only really go back 30-35 years in these matters. I have noticed that my own sensitivity to sweetness has become greater as I’ve gotten older, though. I loved sweets as a kid; not so much now. I’ve been trying to dig up an old label with nutrition info to help gauge if there is any difference and how much, but I’ve been unsuccessful (besides, I’m not exactly sure when that sort of nutritional info became mandatory, but it was certainly around at least to when I was a kid in the 80s.)
It may have been very sweet, sure, but there are different qualities of sweetness. Have you ever actually taste-tested? I did it formally with Coke–in which the amount of sugar is no different–and kind of inadvertently with ketchup (though not the same brand). The difference was unmistakable to me.
