This is one of my son's favourite meals, but I warn you: It's gonna take over 2 hours. 

You can always make the marinara sauce and save it for later. Your choice. 

Here goes: 

Tools: An immersion blender, 

regular blender, or food processor

Ingredients:

Meatballs of your choosing 

(We use beef ones that are already formed in balls. 

Make sure there is no added flour or bread crumbs, 

which happens with ready-made meatballs sometimes.)

 

Tonight I made "ketchup" from an SCD recipe found here. It says to combine 3 cups of tomato juice (must be PURE tomato juice! Just tomatoes and perhaps salt, there must be no other ingredients in the juice!), 3 tablespoons of distilled white vinegar, 1 teaspoon of raw honey, and 1/4 a teaspoon of salt. Then bring to a simmer and stir relentlessly for 20 minutes. The blogger talks about how tiring it was to keep stirring but then eventually it turned into ketchup. I stirred for AN HOUR and still didn't have ketchup. 

Do you ever see Pinterest fails and feel embarrassed for whoever posted it? It's like they actually thought the recipe was somehow wrong when it's clear they don't understand the basics of cooking. They post it publicly with this attitude that Pinterest is somehow to blame with its unrealistic expectations that you simply follow the clear instructions. My favourite is when people frost cupcakes the second they get out of the oven and the frosting melts all over the place. And they were actually attempting some really ambitious frosting design of some sort when it's obvious they've never frosted a cupcake before. I'm all for trying new things, but learn the foundations of what you need to achieve them first. You can't just jump to a level you don't understand. But what frustrates me are the real Pinterest fails. The ones where someone with a decent handle on the culinary process follows the directions to a T and they still don't get the desired result. It really gives me trust issues with people who post these procedures online and claim they got an outcome that doesn't add up. 

So, you can trust me because I did this and here's what happened. I stirred and stirred and adjusted the temperature as needed. And the result was what can only be described as ketchup-flavoured marinara sauce. The vinegar gave it the tang of ketchup, but the consistency was straight up sauce. It was too watery despite how much I tried to reduce it. Tomato paste is illegal, so that was out. It would've made more sense to dip mozzarella sticks in it than to spread it on a burger. But the latter is what we did. We grilled up some cheeseburgers in the crazy heat we're experiencing. I made carrots and broccoli as sides and prepared a smoothie for later. (We also ended up eating cherries for desert.) And the ketchup sauce tasted alright. It wasn't my son's favourite, but I thought the taste wasn't bad and we both went back for additional scoops. 

It was a first attempt, so I'll give it another shot. But I'll probably shop around more recipes and combine ideas from each to increase my chances of success. That is something I normally do but didn't give the time to tonight. It also could've done with some seasoning. As I experiment, I will update you!