How to get the texture of commercial ketchup

food-scienceketchupthickening

This has some relation to my previous question. Though I have managed to successfully blend xanthan gum with my home-made tomato mixture, I am unable to achieve a texture close to Hienz, or Hunt's ketchup, or any commercial sauce for that matter.

My xanthan gum-added ketchup does not have the same buttery, smooth texture of Hienz. No matter what I do, the resulting sauce is too mucus-like.

My question is, besides xanthan gum, do ketchup manufacturers add anything else to achieve the buttery, smooth texture?

Below is my ketchup recipe:

  1. Boil 1kg of canned San Marzano tomatoes for 5 mins, until soft.

  2. Press the mixture through a sieve to get a clear juice and filter out any pulp or skin. Ketch

  3. I would then simmer this juice with 200ml of vinegar on a pot for 3- 4 hours until it reduces from 900ml to 300ml. Note that at this point, the sauce is still watery.

  4. I added xanthan gum at this step, 1/8 of a teaspoon at a time. The resulting mixture after adding around 3/8 teaspoons was that the ketchup was still thin, but already mucus-like in mouth feel. Adding more xanthan gum at this point thickened the sauce considerably, but also made it more disgusting in mouth feel.

Best Answer

Try sugar.

Per Heinz' website, the ingredients in their ketchup are:

TOMATO CONCENTRATE FROM RED RIPE TOMATOES, DISTILLED VINEGAR, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, CORN SYRUP, SALT, SPICE, ONION POWDER, NATURAL FLAVORING

I notice that they do not include xanthan gum at all, but they do include sugar in the form of various corn syrups. Cooking plain sugar can can harden it (think the ball stages of candy-making). I think that what happens in commercial ketchup is not so much a "thickening" as a "hardening" of the tomato syrup, for lack of a better word. It is likely that during the reducing stage of ketchup making, the sugar reaches what would be at least soft-ball stage if the ratio of sugar to everything else was correct, thus leading to a ketchup that is "thick" but not hard or mucus-y.

Edited to add: As noted in the comments by @Ecnerwal, Heinz also seems to be using a tomato concentrate, which would include the flesh of the tomatoes. When I initially read the question, I seem to have missed that you're straining out the solids. Try leaving them in as you reduce-- the addition of solid matter will also help thicken while providing a better mouthfeel.

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