Homemade ketchup, relish, and mustard! BBQ friendly condiments for #letslunch

Homemade Ketchup, Pineapple Relish, and Honey Bourbon Mustard. Now all I need is a BBQ!

So! As some of you may know, I am a member of a twitter group that uses the hashtag #letslunch. It's a virtual potluck in which bloggers from all over post recipes based on a certain theme, once a month. This month's theme is BBQ! I luuuuv me some BBQ! However, I have been a busy bee this past month bopping around Saskatchewan and Alberta for work and as you can tell by the last blog post - have fallen off my game in the past couple weeks. FURTHERMORE - I am ALWAYS late with my #letslunch posts. You'd think with no other hobbies, commitments or a social life that I'd be much less busy. Oh well.. Plus ça change. 


One of the reasons I am such a late-kitty is that I always forget until the night before and then try and make do with the scraps I have in my kitchen (because inevitably it always falls on the one day a week my cupboards are bare. of course).. SO when I remembered this week I decided to do something that didn't take a myriad of ingredients or preparation - no hand-sculpted lamb kabobs with mint raita skewered on intricately woven cinnamon basil and rosemary. Nope, this time I'd make something basic, essential, and lovely. 


So I put my smart girl thinking cap on and thought - what's essential to a bbq? Besides beer. Why the condiments of course! You can't have a bbq without 'em. I made a basic ketchup, a honey bourbon mustard, and a pineapple relish. Ketchup is ketchup is ketchup. I didn't feel any need to do anything too crazy with my ketchup. Or catsup. Or catchsup if you will. The spelling catsup makes me shudder inside. In one word it seems to encapsulate everything that has gone wrong or will ever go wrong in 'American English'.



Cultural elitism aside, for mustard I got down with Amurikah and made it with some honey, some Maker's Mark, and a blend of black and yellow mustard seeds. Nom nom fanc-eh! 


For the relish I went Hawaiian and made a pineapple relish. This one is reaaaally good but I think I'm going to still tinker with it to try and replicate the puka dog pineapple relish from Kauai. If you have never had a puka dog, truly I say to thee, you have never lived.

Without further ado, here is my trifecta of tasty toppings. 

Homemade Ketchup Ingredients

1 can of tomato paste

2 diced tomatoes

2 tbsp cider vinegar

1 tbsp brown sugar

1 tsp molassas

1/4 tsp all-spice

1/2 tsp fennel seeds

1 1/4 cup of water

1 cup of onion, diced

1 clove of garlic

3 dashes of liquid smoke

Sorry for the weird angle.. blogger is skewing my
photos today. But still! Taste the goodness!

other things you will need: 

a pot

a frying pan

a stirring spoon

an immersion blender/food processor

1. In a frying pan, sautee your onion and garlic until they're soft and nommy. Approximately 3 -4 minutes. 
2. Add all ingredients - including onion and garlic - into your pan and simmer over medium low for half an hour or so. 
3. After those tasty 30 minutes are up, blend it away with your blenderino. 
4. Taste it. It doesn't taste like Heinz. Correct. It taste like real. It taste like awesome. Enjoy on some sexy sexy hot dawgs or hamburglers. 

MORE?! Read on for some bourbon mustard!