Mamta's Kitchen - A Family Cookbook





Pressurised Spicy Tomato Ketchup

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On 20/01/2010 07:01pm, Winton wrote:

Just made the 'Spicy Tomato Ketchup' on site - never ceases to amaze me how good it is and worth while it is to be extra diligent in pushing that last piece of pulp through the sieve to increase the yield!

For the first time I used a pressure cooker (at which I am still a novice.) The taste from the spice bag was quite overpowering - especially the cloves. Does using a pressure cooker magnify the taste of whole spices or had perhaps I just done something daft like adding a tablespoon measure rather than a teaspoon?

Anyway I rescued the situation by making a non-spiced batch and combining the two!

On 20/01/2010 08:01pm, Askcy wrote:

Winton I think Lapis mentioned this on another topic... The smells/taste you get are from the chemicals released in the oils (paraphrasing) so the long you cook something the more it will release those chemcials into the air.... if you cook it quickly in a sealed pressure cooker presumably less of the chemicals will be released to the air so more will be left in the dish giving more flavour... (the same reason I don't dry fry spices then add them to the oil.. )

Steve

On 20/01/2010 08:01pm, Winton wrote:

Thanks Steve - that makes sense, as for instance the recipe advises to drain off the watery liquid on top as there will not have been any evaporation during the cooking time compared to conventional cooking. As I wrote I am still a novice at pressure cooking (but learning fast!)

On 21/01/2010 07:01am, Andrew wrote:

I have made the tomato ketchup twice so far but I never used a pressure cooker. I will have to try it and see how it goes.

On 21/01/2010 11:01am, Lapis wrote:

Steve is correct, the more we cook things (especially in open vessel, the more aroma chemicals are lost to the air in our kitchen. However, I think the answer in this case is about solubility. Most of the flavour in cloves comes from a chemical called eugenol. It is not very soluble in water, about 100 less than in oil, and as the recipe has no oil (to speak of), then I can only guess that it is the elevated temperature in the pressure cooker (~120?C) that helps to extract the clove oil into the water. Once cooled, the clove oil (and any other spice oils extracted) may well find their way to the top of the liquid sauce, so a good stir before bottling may be prudent.

You can see this happening in a bottle of orange squash. The orange contains carotenes, which are incredibly insoluble in water. After standing on the shelf for a while, many bottles of squash will have a ring of carotenes (usually deep orange or red) just below the surface, in the neck of the bottle.

On 21/01/2010 12:01pm, Andrew wrote:

I think I will stick to making it without the pressure cooker. Pressure cooker has its uses but I think that some things are better to cooked without it.

Lapis, is there any truth about destroying the enzymes in our food if we cook it above 180C? If so then the pressure cooker must obliterate most things.

On 21/01/2010 05:01pm, Lapis wrote:

enzymes are proteins, and so de-natured by heat.

I don't understand what you are trying to say. Enzymes don't provide any nourishment for our bodies, they only exist for the benefit of the organism they are found in.

Pressure cookers can only get up to 121?C at 15 psi above atmospheric pressure (~ +1 bar pressure), I don't see where the 180?C comes from?

On 21/01/2010 06:01pm, Andrew wrote:

I meant 118C not 180C, sorry - typo.

Not that I believe everything I read on the wide-eyed-web, but I was reading up on raw food diets recently and some 'raw foodies' claim that by cooking foods above 118C that it destroys or changes all the enzymes and removes much of the nutrition.

Then again I have read the opposite. One woman claims that in order for us to get the goodness from vegetables we need to break the cell walls by cooking, drying, or freezing. She claims that we get more nutrition from vegetables by cooking them.

I was just asking for your thoughts on this.

Thanks.

On 21/01/2010 08:01pm, Lapis wrote:

I saw a little about this on TV and thought then it was a load of hogwash. As I said, enzymes are used by an organism to perform a certain function. It cannot be used by humans, they are broken down in our stomach by our enzymes that break up proteins, called proteases. We do not derive anything from other animal enzymes, or those from vegetation.

We have to cook certain foods to break down the starch, so that other enzymes can continue the process, to produce glucose, to be used as an energy source.

Not cooking these foods is a bit like trying to get clove oil out of cloves using only cold water! LOL

So cook your carbs, a billion Indians cannot be wrong!

On 21/01/2010 09:01pm, Andrew wrote:

LOL. I love that saying "a billion Indians can't be wrong" and how right you are too.

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