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I grew up in Romania, a country where our moms or grandmas prepare homemade food in autumn for the upcoming cold winter. Even with all my childhood cooking experience, it wasn’t until I attended chef school that I thought about making homemade ketchup instead of grabbing a bottle at the supermarket.
Prep Time: 15 hours Cook Time: 15min Serves: 6 Servings Level: Beginning
After deciding to eat more natural food and minimizing processed food and ingredients from my diet, I wanted to give myself a kitchen challenge, and make a RAW VEGAN KETCHUP.
WHY RAW?
When it comes to eating healthy, introducing raw food into your daily meals is one of my recommendations. A raw food diet consists mainly of unprocessed whole foods that are primarily plant-based and organic with high nutritional value. Foods have a higher nutritional value when they are raw. Cooking food destroys vitamins, protein, and fat.
Cooked foods contain unhealthy unsaturated fats, which do more harm than good. They can cause high inflammatory responses in the body and lead to heart problems. They are high in added sugar or salt, which can cause severe health issues. A raw food diet is unprocessed and healthy. Raw food is also more flavorsome than cooked food. Without going through the cooking process, the food will retain natural taste, vitamins and nutrients.
This doesn’t mean you have to only eat raw food. In fact, I do not recommend becoming a 100% Raw Food eater. This is because, if you are unfamiliar with Raw Food or do not like to spend time in your kitchen, eating only salad and fruit daily will become dull and you will struggle enjoying your diet. Also, if you do not live in a place like California or Bali, where Raw Food is popular, creative and diverse, it will be challenging to eat outside or include diversity in your meals. Raw Food has a long preparation process, from 8 hours or more, using the dehydration machine to make special dishes.
If you live in a cold-weather city, it will be difficult in winter to survive only with raw food. Your body needs to be warm and you will crave a hot meal like soup. This is why, as a promoter of a healthy lifestyle, and someone who does not believe in rigorous diets, I recommend you introduce some raw food into your daily routine. It is much easier than you expect, and maybe it is already in your routine, but you didn’t realize it. I recommend having a raw smoothie or fresh juice for breakfast, a green salad next to your lunch, some nuts or fruits for a snack and a raw rainbow salad for dinner. And with this lifestyle, almost 50% of your meals are raw, natural and healthy.
RAW VEGAN KETCHUP
This simple recipe combines fresh ingredients with sun-dried tomatoes, dates and a few other spices for a delicious raw ketchup that's perfect with our Tofu Nuggets. This ketchup can be the raw addition to your meal. It is easy to make, super healthy and has a sweet and tangy taste. It is gluten-free, vegan, delicious, thick, and full of tomato flavor.
Store your raw vegan ketchup in a glass jar/bottle with an airtight lid. It will last for approximately 2 weeks in the refrigerator. Since it’s fresh and doesn’t have preservatives, be cautious before consuming by using your sight and smell. To do this, check if there is any mold or funny smell on your ketchup and if there is, throw it away.
RECIPE
Ingredients
1 cup sundried tomatoes
½ cup fresh tomatoes
5 tbsp date paste or 10 Medjool dates
4 tbsp apple cider vinegar or coconut vinegar
1 tsp mustard
1 tsp tamari
2 tsp paprika
2 tsp onion powder
1 tsp salt
¼ tsp pepper
Preparation:
Step 1
Soak the sun dried tomatoes in water for 30 minutes.
Step 2
If you do not have date paste, soak the 10 Medjool dates in ½ cup of water for 30 minutes.
Step 3
Blend all the ingredients until well incorporated.
Step 3
Enjoy it!