Apple Cider Vinegar Is The Key To More Flavorful Homemade Ketchup

It's so easy to grab a bottle of ketchup from supermarket shelves, ensuring instant accessibility when needed. The pre-made kind is relatively affordable, shelf-stable, and long-lasting in the fridge after opening. As for the taste, we all have our favorite versions, whether mainstream commercial brands or small-batch offerings from regional entrepreneurs. All that is fine and good, but making your own ketchup at home takes things to a whole new level — especially because you can customize per taste.

With fresh ingredients and an adventurous spirit, anyone can make homemade ketchup that marches to a different drummer. Tasting Table recipe developer Miriam Hahn created a simple homemade ketchup recipe, noting that making hand-crafted sauces and condiments yourself "gives you fancy restaurant vibes, and takes your meal up a notch on the flavor scale." Fortunately, one of the most intriguing ways to get that flavor boost is also the easiest. It's all about the vinegar.

Though most ketchup products already employ vinegar for a touch of tangy zest, it's typically the standard distilled white version. A simple swap-in for apple cider vinegar instantly transforms your condiment, in more ways than one. Lingering fruity flavors from the apples add subtle crisp sweetness to homemade ketchup, which is reason enough to buy that bottle of apple cider vinegar. But you'll also get some unexpected benefits from the fermentation process.

Cooking with apple cider vinegar enriches the taste of countless foods, including condiments. It undoubtedly elevates the flavor profile of ketchup, raising it from ordinary to something special — but it does more than that. Rather than using grains, apple cider vinegar is created from crushed, juiced apples that go through a double fermentation process. The sugar in the juice eventually turns into acetic acid, resulting in that sweet tangy flavor we love. It also carries some pretty impressive health benefits.

The acetic acid, which typically equals 5% to 6% of apple cider vinegar, is believed to be responsible for most of the drink's health-enhancing attributes. Depending on whether the vinegar is organic, unfiltered, and various other factors, it can potentially destroy harmful bacteria, lower blood sugar levels, improve heart health, and improve skin conditions.

The amount of apple cider vinegar in homemade ketchup may be minuscule compared to gulping down a full glass, but even small health benefits are always a plus. And the flavor enhancement alone is reason enough to embrace its inclusion. You can create your ketchup recipe from scratch or adapt an existing ketchup recipe by swapping out the white vinegar. It's also possible to boost the taste of store-bought ketchup with a little splash of apple cider vinegar. Just go easy, since there's already white vinegar in almost all commercial ketchups.