Serves: 5
So is ketchup a frivolous habit or a culinary necessity? For the enlightened, it's both. While food snobs and chutney freaks might snub it, consider a world without ketchup. Forget what its absence would do to French fries--Europeans insist a good mustard or (urp!) mayonnaise can pick up the slack. Forget the wasteland of a ketchup-less burger. Ketchup is not only the reason addicts get out of bed in the morning (scrambled eggs and Heinz®, anyone?). Ketchup is the backbone of some of the best barbecue sauces ever brewed. And life without red barbecue sauce would be tragic indeed.
As prepared foods go, ketchup's the one even holistic hardliners can forgive, for it giveth not only great color, but great flavor, too. True, this proud tomato-based descendant of China's "kêtsiap" began life as a fish sauce, but who are we, who rose from the primordial mud one cell division at a time, to point fingers? The fact is, ketchup is good. Ketchup is king. And ketchup is sweeter than most people you'll meet on a daily basis.
Imagine our horror, then, when a certain top-selling brand came out with a green version of our beloved elixir, openly--shamelessly--targeted to young children. It is our express opinion that this is market research gone dangerously too far. Mislead an entire generation of future ketchup connoisseurs? We shudder at the implications.
Purists, don't be lead astray. It's spelled k-e-t-c-h-u-p, not catsup. It's red, it's thick, and it means business. No self-respecting refrigerator would be caught dead without it. Defend your right to enjoy it--and give it a reassuring squeeze!
From Weber’s Big Book of Grilling. Copyright © 2001 Weber-Stephen Products Co. All rights reserved. First published by Chronicle Books LLC, San Francisco, California.
This _America's Main Squeeze: In Praise of Ketchup recipe is from the Weber's Big Book of Grilling Cookbook. Download this Cookbook today.
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