And who doesn’t love sweet?

(Acidity from vinegar helps too)

> Thanks in part to high-quality ingredients, Heinz’s new tomato ketchup cost two to three times more than its competitors. But the price increase also paid for the largest advertising campaign the industry had ever seen

So it was higher quality and had the biggest advertising campaign.

[1]: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/ketchup

Leaving this here since the site hijacked ctrl+c to add its url: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/business-jokes/coca-col...

Huy Fong Foods Sriracha is basically just red jalapeno ketchup.

If you can switch your brain to thinking of it as grape dipping sauce you'd probably like it.

You mean the exact same thing Europeans do with leafy greens?

But one is a target of economic protectionism and the other isn't, so it must be scary in that specific case.

> eggs with water (which massively reduces its shelf life).

Ok, and?

It's a notorious "newb trap" for chefs. You see a place making their own ketchup, that stuff might be good but you know they don't have a seasoned professional's view of where value is made. It takes hours of labor to make ketchup for something that in the end doesn't make your burger taste better than heinz does.

Works in other art forms, too, and works in regular cooking. If you like a sensation, be careful to not dive in and add LOTS of it or the thing you like will end up distractingly strong, and the gestalt will suffer.

I found that tomato paste, sugar, vinegar and ground up pickling spice was good enough for me. And only took 15 minutes.

The consensus was at the time was that it’s shelf stable due to the acidity, but it still needs to be refrigerated after opening. Restaurants go through sauce quicker, so they can leave it on the table.

[1] https://x.com/heinzuk/status/1673651138774589444

I don't know if ketchup's low enough to stay indefinitely, but it'll keep long enough.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_activity

Amazing the leaps you took to make this statement. 1) There are no food dyes that I am aware of. 2) I don't think the science is conclusive that HFCS is any worse than sugar. 3) They make many varieties, some which use cane sugar instead of HFCS. 4) What does this have anything to to with the US?

Heinz Simply: Tomato Concentrate from Red Ripe Tomatoes, Distilled Vinegar, Cane Sugar, Salt, Onion Powder, Spice, Natural Flavoring

Heinz No Sugar Added: Tomato Concentrate from Red Ripe Tomatoes, Distilled White Vinegar, Salt, Natural Flavoring, Stevia Leaf Extract (Not Normally Found in Ketchup), Onion Powder

Heinz No Salt Added: Tomato Concentrate from Red Ripe Tomatoes, Distilled White Vinegar, Sugar, Potassium Chloride (Not in Regular Ketchup), Natural Flavoring, Spice, Onion Powder

Heinz Organic: Organic Tomato Concentrate from Red Ripe Organic Tomatoes, Organic Distilled Vinegar, Organic Sugar, Salt, Organic Onion Powder, Organic Spice, Natural Flavoring

Heinz Jalapeno: Tomato Concentrate from Red Ripe Tomatoes, Distilled Vinegar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Salt, Dried Jalapeno Peppers, Spice, Onion Powder, Natural Flavors, Bell Pepper Juice Concentrate

There are probably others, those are the ones listed at one store.

There's no way that won't be found to be toxic. I recently had a health scare where I was inadvertently consuming a lot of it in a coffee creamer: the label color had changed and I thought nothing of it, but it represented a change in sweetener from monkfruit/stevia to 'sucralose'.

Came damn close to going to the hospital. Gut pain and sweats and pooping lighter and lighter shades as my organs shut down (at least from producing bile).

Figured out the change, dumped all the 'sucralose' and after a week or so returned to normal health, no other changes in diet or behavior at all.

I don't know why it's not banned already, but it must be hella profitable.

Gastropod has a good episode on ketchup; it might have been the one I'm thinking of but it might not. It covers many of the same things as this article but in more depth with certain things.

Indigestible. Used in place of flour or corn starch as a thickener or emulsifier. They can be quite irritating to some people.

We are starting to see more companies enter the market with sugar free ketchups, for example.

By me, Hunts is a common alternative to Heinz, but it seen as an option for people who buy on price, not taste.

Recently, I have been trying some of the sugar free options, but always also have a bottle of Heinz on hand, because if anyone comes over to my house, they will be disappointed with anything else. If kids come over, they might not eat their meal if it’s anything else.

On a side note, American supermarkets being accused of having less options is genuinely a first for me to hear. On average, especially for common goods like this, you're looking at a 2-4x brand diversity in an American supermarket. That doesn't necessarily mean it's better quality, but you're definitely going to see more options just due to the sheer relative size of American supermarkets.

I live in Chicago, we’re lucky to have a single ketchup in the supermarket.

(Around the 2:35 mark):

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=efG56KcQj0Q

But hey I live in the Midwest. Maybe the Heinz ketchup marketing juggernaut passed us by.

"Fermentation was primarily developed for the stabilization of perishable agricultural produce."

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/food-science/food-ferme...

Edit: You can skip the fermanation step by pickling your vegetables with a suitable vinegar. The taste will be much different though.

Wines can taste great (better even!) after years of storage, I would have not problem eating a well ages fermented ketchup.