Making sugar-free low-carb and keto ketchup is unbelievably easy. Just combine all ingredients, mix well and you’re ready to dig in — or dip in! No cooking, no compromises, full taste, little carbs. The secret spice makes this ketchup piquant and tasty!
Tips for making the low-carb and keto ketchup
We are talking about a super simple and easy recipe, absolutely no tricks needed in preparing this thing! Even the ketchup is ready in a snap, it’s a good idea to let it stand in the fridge for a couple of hours or even overnight so that all the flavors get deeper. The ketchup really tastes even better on the next day.
As you know, cayenne pepper — the secret spice here — is indeed spicy, so please be really careful with it especially if you are going to make the ketchup for kids. A really tiny pinch or actually a shake is enough. You can naturally increase the amount if you fancy fiery flavors. I do recommend to use a little bit cayenne anyway, the ketchup tastes a bit too bland without it.
But let’s check how to prepare this tasty sauce:
Here are all the ingredients. You can see that the tomato paste is very thick compared to the tomato sauce. Use only natural products which contain just tomato and maybe some salt. If you can get organic stuff, even better.
Then just combine all ingredients…
…and mix with spoon…
…until everything is very well mixed.
It’s as simple as that!
Ready-in-a-Snap Low-Carb Ketchup (Vegan)
Ingredients
- 10 oz = 280 g natural, unsweetened tomato sauce
- 2 oz = 60 g natural, unsweetened tomato paste
- 15 drops liquid stevia
- 2 teaspoons raw organic apple cider vinegar
- 1 tiny pinch organic cayenne pepper
Instructions
- Place all ingredients in a small bowl.
- Mix well with spoon.
| Nutrition information | Protein | Fat | Net carbs | kcal |
| In total: | 6.5 g | 0.8 g | 21.4 g | 119 kcal |
| Per tablespoon: | 0.3 g | trace | 0.9 g | 5 kcal |
My low-carb and keto ketchup experiments
Now when I think, the first ever low-carb ketchup experiment I made was from George Stella’s book Livin’ Low-Carb. I always thought you have to cook the ketchup but he just mixed everything in his ingenious recipe and that was it!
I liked the result. I didn’t use Splenda — which the recipe used — but powdered erythritol instead. That gave a bit of cool aftertaste which was somewhat prominent but very tolerable after all.
Somehow the tomato paste was overpowering tastewise. Actually, it also felt a little flaky and frictional on my tongue. Yes, I think those weird words describe the feeling best. The recipe as such was simple and great, but it just wasn’t perfect to my personal taste.
So, I needed to create something which would go better with my personal taste. I started tweaking the recipe.
After some heavy tweaking there wasn’t much left from the original recipe, just tomato sauce and tomato paste, and the quantities and ratios were completely different from those of the original recipe.
In my experiments I drastically reduced the amount of tomato paste to get rid of that weird taste and feeling it gave. I noticed that you need just a small amount of tomato paste to reach the ideal consistency and the right taste.
I also tested different spices. I thought white pepper would have been an ideal spice with ketchup, but I was completely wrong! I went through my whole pantry before I found the perfect seasoning: cayenne pepper.
To be honest, I checked in a grocery store the ingredient lists of several commercial sugar-laden ketchup bottles, and saw cayenne in some of them.
At home I added a pinch of cayenne to my bland and tasteless ketchup experiment and there it was! The perfect ketchup recipe had born. Now I must say a word of caution here: even my taste buds consider this as perfect ketchup, somebody else might disagree. Therefore I would be really glad if you leave your favorite ketchup recipe — or link to it — in the comment section below.
But back to my experiments. Ha, since I love experimenting with food and recipes I wanted to establish a web page called Elviira’s Experiments. However, a URL called www.elviirasexperiments.com would have looked too suspicious so I gave up the idea completely. But at least I would have had plenty of traffic there!
Sorry, now finally back to my ketchup experiments: The original recipe called for white vinegar. I also had used that in my first experiments. Then I thought that good old raw apple cider vinegar could be not only a healthier option, but also a less overpowering option. It was, I liked the result really much. ACV gave more versatile flavor in a less pungent way.
Tips for variation
You can naturally play with different spices. I love to make curry ketchup since that’s something what my husband and I could eat every day, but which you cannot get here in Finland. And if you could, it would be full of sugar, MSG, preservatives and other yucky stuff.
We do buy curry ketchup from Germany every time we visit there. Or we used to buy, since now I can whip up a batch of curry ketchup whenever we fancy some. The ingredients? Just use this recipe and add 1 1/2 teaspoons mild curry powder simultaneously with the other ingredients. You can omit the cayenne if you like. It’s as easy as that and I feel shame that I didn’t invent this healthier curry ketchup option before so that we had to eat years that commercial ketchup which is loaded with the yucky stuff.
If you are in an experimental mood, a pinch of ground organic cinnamon gives the ketchup a nice, warming and cozy touch. Highly recommended!
Next week I’m going to post a recipe for my favorite dish with this ketchup, which you actually see in these photos. It’s an extremely simple side dish, but I thought it deserves anyway a blog post of its own.
P.S. As I’m quite busy with writing my cookbook now, I have to keep these blog recipes really simple… I’m all about simple anyway!
Sorry, that wasn’t very clear. What you call ketchup is called tomato sauce in England.
Good to know! The tomato sauce that is used as ingredient is basically pureed tomato (not the thick type, but thinner one like you can see from the photos).
I’m in England and the term tomato sauce is actually ketchup here. Do you mean passata/tomato juice?
Hi Elvira,
I found this recipe from your flatbread recipe. Someone recommended that to me.
But I would love to make this ketchup. I don’t like Stevia. how can I sub with a powdered sweetener, like Swerve. Trial and error?
Thank you ever so much for sharing!
Hi, you can certainly replace stevia with powdered erythritol. Confectioner’s Style Swerve should work well. Just add it carefully in the beginning, and add more if you need. It’s quite sweet. Hope you’ll like the ketchup!
I am anxious to try this recipe. Being a type 2 diabetic, I drink vinegar water using 1/2 tablespoon of Bragg or another brand of Organic Apple Cider Vinegar in order to lower my blood sugar before I eat. But research shows that if too much vinegar [No more than 2 tablespoons per day] it becomes ineffective at lowering blood sugar. So, two questions 1] Can a dry form of stevia be used instead of the liqui?. That’s what I have and 2] Is there a substitute for the vinegar that is healthy? I like the fact that there are only a few ingredients and the Cayenne Pepper is also a good blood thinner, good for circulation. Most of the other recipes had many ingredients, but did include the vinegar, the only one that had only 6 called for light brown sugar, but that is not an option for me because it is still a sugar.
Hi Aulbert, yes, dry stevia can be used instead of liquid stevia. You can use for example lemon juice instead of vinegar, or replace part of the vinegar with lemon juice. Another option is a pinch of citric acid or ascorbic acid (vitamin C) to give the needed tang. Hope this helps!
So good and so easy! I did ad a bit of extra cayenne just because I like a little kick. I’ll have this on had all the time Thanks for the super easy recipe
Hi Sue, so great to hear you like it!
I get a kick out some of the argumentative people responding to this recipe. Jeez.
I wonder if Balsamic vinegar would be good in it too . It would add just a touch of the sweetness regular ketchup has, wouldn’t it ?
Hi Rochelle, I guess balsamic vinegar is fine, however it would give that characteristic taste — which is not a bad thing in case you like the flavor of balsamic vinegar in ketchup. Personally I’m not in favor of balsamic vinegar because of advanced glycation end products (AGEs). To my understanding raw apple cider vinegar is the healthiest option and has a great taste too. It’s nicely mild and fruity. I use stevia in the recipe to get the needed sweetness.
If you try out balsamic vinegar with this ketchup, please tell me how it turned out!
French fries?! That’s no LCHF-food 🙁
Heippa Karppi, obviously you don’t know me or my blog. How did you come to an idea that they are French fries? They are turnip fries, so very LCHF 🙂
Hi Elviira,
Just to let you know I have kept a batch in the fridge for several weeks with no problem. It actually seems to taste better the longer it sits! I have also successfully frozen and defrosted a batch with no problems… you just need to give it a good stir/shake when de-frosted. Thanks, Sarah
Hi Sarah! Fantastic, thanks for the useful info, great to know! I still have my latest batch in the freezer but didn’t dare to defrost it yet…
why wouldn’t this keep indefinitely in refrigerator, since all the ingredients keep for quite a long time?
Well, tomato sauce and tomato paste will go bad eventually — especially when there are used no preservatives — so just to be on the safe side I don’t recommend very long storage time.
Yes But vinegar is also a natural preservative
Yes, you’re absolutely right.
Hi Elviira, Thanks for coming back to me about the refridgeration/freezing. I made a large batch last night, so will try freezing some. It came out out very tasty, though I think I used just a little too much stevia. I used a mix of cayenne pepper and mild curry powder which was very nice. I’m sure it will taste even better today after the flavours have had a chance to meld together! Thanks again for the recipe! Sarah
Hi Sarah, great to hear that you like the ketchup! For me it always tastes better on the next day, hope for you too. Please tell me how the freezing went, if you try it out. Anyway I might have to freeze the rest of my test batches, since we cannot consume that much ketchup at once 🙂 My son doesn’t like ketchup at all, which is quite unusual for a little guy…
Oh wow I am going to pin this and make soon. I really like ketchup but not the sugary stuff from the store and it takes too long to make the other SF recipe I have been using. Sometimes I get tired of having to make so many things on my own. Sometimes there are other things I would rather do, but I know my health is worth it.
Andrea, I hope this recipe satisfies your ketchup cravings! You can easily adjust the amount of stevia to get the preferred sweetness. Just add a few drops at first, mix properly and add more if needed. Let me know how it worked out and how you like it!
Hi Elviira, thanks for posting this great recipe. I’m going to try it this evening! Do you have any idea how long it keeps for in the fridge? I assume also that it can be frozen? Many thanks, Sarah
Hi Sarah, thanks for your comment! I have kept it in the fridge for a week, however my fridge is quite cold, 3 °C (37.4 °F). I haven’t tried freezing the ketchup but just froze tomato paste. At least that worked. Please tell me how you like the ketchup if you try it out!