Tomato Ketchup processing
Tomato ketchup is a popular condiment made from tomatoes, vinegar, sugar, and various spices. The types of sweeteners used are usually granulated cane sugar or beet sugar. Other sweeteners include dextrose or liquid sugar in the form of corn or glucose syrup.
Tomato ketchup is a condiment made by mixing concentrated tomato paste with water, sugar, vinegar, salt and seasonings. The paste itself is typically manufactured using the "Hot Break" method, in which pulped tomatoes are heated to 200˚F (90˚C). Hot Break preserves the pectin found naturally in tomatoes — which is what carries body and consistency through to the finished bottle — although some of the aroma and colour are lost in the process.
A ketchup line runs from raw tomato through storage, cleaning and sorting, skin and seed removal, heat treatment, refining and evaporation. From that point the plant either pasteurizes and packs tomato paste, or carries the paste forward into formulation with ingredients, processing, pasteurization and packing of ketchup or puree. Recipe, viscosity and solids content vary widely between products, so the paste is blended with water and the other ingredients before manufacturing continues.
Typical ingredients include salt (sodium chloride) up to 2%, sugar around 30 to 35%, spices and spice extracts, vinegar, acetic acid, onions, garlic, chillies, and pectin and alginates as stabilizers. On solids, ketchup contains no less than 12% tomato solids and 25% total solids, while tomato sauce has a TSS of 24–25% — ketchup carries more spices and seasonings than sauce, and the key difference between the two products is thickness or consistency.