Dave, salt, sugar and acid are the preservatives in sauce. So if we remove one, we may have to up another or preserve in a different way (E.g by freezing, canning etc.)
The recipes are many and varied. Vinegar wise, they are all 5% acetic acid so choice is down to taste rather than effect. Increasingly I prefer less refined sugars (muscovado etc) and wine or cider based vinegars. That's a taste thing though. It's pretty much
Prep
Cook
Strain
Bottle
I can do a ketchup tutorial over Winter if there's interest.
Blimey, thank you everyone... I wasn't even sure I'd get a reply, let alone recipes and so much advice.
I love the idea of getting the kids involved in making it... they get to see what is going into the sauces they're eating.
My concerns aren't really about the calories or even the salts/sugars in commercial sauces, its everything else they plonk in there... we noticed a difference, particularly with our sons, to their behaviour when they've had certain sauces and I don't want to just say no to sauces.
Going to have a natter with the kids when they get home from school/college, see what they want to try making first
I dont exactly make my own sauces but I do stuff based on Mayonaise...things like Tatare sauce and thousand island dressing.
You do know that thousand island dressing is just salad cream mixed with tomato ketchup?
Well, you could do it that way...
3/4 mayo
1/4 tartare
enough tomato sauce to turn it pink
dash lemon juice.
is what I use
"...All suggestions considered ..."
Lea & Perrins Worcester sauce is the only bottled sauce on the table when my kids eat (nippy sauce as my son calls it). As far as I am aware the Lea & Perrins version contains nothing that was developed in a lab. We make lots of curries and such in bulk and freeze them and as they contain a sauce there is no need to add anything else.
tartare sauce for fish.
3/4 Mayo
1/4 chopped gherkins, chopped capers, wholegrain mustard