When you’ve been making a recipe for close to half a century, things will change.
Sometimes, on purpose, like when I started adding a bit of spicy organic ketchup to the base mix; making for a nice, and slight (I thought) hit of heat. My great great nephew was not impressed, and so his chicken tenders have been languishing with store bought sauce.
This time, I screwed up and was flat out of apple cider vinegar. What to do?
Well, as it happens, using a three-to-one ratio of white vinegar to fig balsamic worked and absolute treat!
INGREDIENTS
•2 (64 oz) Heinz ketchup
•3 cups brown sugar
•1-1/2 cup white vinegar
•1/2 cup fig balsamic vinegar
•2 tbsp Coleman’s dry mustard
•4 tsp garlic powder
•4 tsp onion powder
•1/4 cup lemon juice
•1 tsp Cayenne pepper
•1 tsp Aleppo pepper
•1/2 tsp crushed red pepper
•1/2 tsp allspice
•1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
•1 tsp Cajun Power Spicy Garlic Pepper Sauce, or your fave hot sauce, to taste
•1 tsp steak seasoning
•1 tsp black pepper
Note: for this batch, I also went back to my roots and made the sauce in a large Dutch oven; but, this Dutch oven is my new fave non-stick pan, so cooking over a low flame for a couple of hours, even with the brown sugar and ketchup and stuff made cooking and clean up a breeze.
Whisk all of the ingredients together in a large pot and cook over low to medium heat, stirring often, for 90 minutes to two hours or so, until the sauce is smooth, the color has darkened to this lovely red, and it is thickened.
Note: for ease of getting all that ketchup goodness out of the bottles, I add the ketchup to the pot, then rinse the bottles with the vinegar, recapping and shaking each bottle until any stubborn bits in the corners or bottom are coaxed out and into the pot.
Once the sauce is ready, transfer to sterilized canning jars, attach lids and “two finger tighten” the bands.
Process in a boiling water bath (if your water is a bit hard, as is mine, add a good splash of white vinegar to the water while boiling) for 15 minutes. Remove from the water and cool on a rack.Listen for the lids to “pop” which means they are properly sealed. If some jars do not pop, press down the little cricle in the top. If it stays down, you are good. If it doesn’t, try reprocessing those jars for another 15 minutes.
I ended up with ten, 12 ounce jars, two, 8 ounce jars and just a bit leftover that I cooled and stashed in the fridge.
Fig and sage barbecue pan seared pork chops, coming right up!
A perfect autumnal dinner, if I do say so myself.
And…
I do.