Heston's mushroom ketchup

Minder

I am not a big fan of Heston Blumenthal and that whole Molecular Gastronomy approach to cooking but I did watch his show In Search of Perfection - I was particularly interested in the steak accompaniments and searched the internet for Heston's recipe for mushroom ketchup.

I made this last night. There is enough salt in it to choke a donkey. This is the ingredient list.

For the mushroom juice
1.5kg button mushrooms
75g table salt

1 Wipe the mushrooms clean with damp kitchen paper, then chop finely or blitz briefly in a food processor.

2 Tip the mushrooms into a fine sieve placed over a bowl, and stir in the salt. Store in the fridge for 24 hours, or until the salt has drawn the juice from the mushrooms.

For each 600ml of mushroom juice, you will need:

120ml red wine
60ml red-wine vinegar
¼ tsp ground mace
½ tsp whole black peppercorns
2 cloves
1 shallot, roughly chopped
Cornflour (to thicken)

I got 1.2 ltr of mushroom juice - I added the wine and vinegar and reduced to 750ml - about half. Thickened with cornflour and tasted. I couldn't believe the amount of salt in it. Tried the raw potato to rescue it but I am not convinced it made enough of a difference.

Crudely measuring the liquid, 750ml is about 750 grammes - assuming all the salt goes into solution in the juice, we have 75 grammes of salt for 750 grammes of solution. That is 10%. That surely has to be off the chart in any rda analysis.

Apparently Mr Blumenthal has three michelin stars - I guess mushroom ketchup is not on the menu at the Fat Duck!!!

The Sweeper

Do you think it'd be better if you halved the salt?

I remember buying a tin of Sainsburys Organic Winter Vegetable soup - one of the 400g tins. Came in late and starving one day, heated it, scarfed the lot (wolfed it down mind) and about five minutes after I'd finished it I had a huge urge for water and downed a full pint of water. I went back and read the tin, there was 6.4g of salt in a 400g tin of soup.

I can't imagine how that ketchup would work out...

I wrote to Sainsburys about it, and they gave me a repeated stock response of "We are trying to improve our blah blah" but never specifically answered the question of "Why do you feel the need to pickle your products". They delivered some lovely soundbytes about recommended maximum daily intakes and heart disease. I quoted these back to Sainsbury's and presented the argument that their soup doesn't form part of a balanced diet based on the breakdown of its ingredients. They ignored me.

Can you email the Heston people and check if the ingredient breakdown is correct? (And I remember you made mushroom ketchup before because you gave me a bottle of it - whose recipe did you use that time?)

Minder

I used heston's recipe on the previous batch, but I think I reduced the salt that time. I was looking for a copy of the recipe and found a thread on Deliaonline - similar experiences there - everyone who made it said it is too salty.

I will try a mechanical method to extract the juice next time - no salt. The seasonings can be added at the end. Unfortunately this batch is heading down the sink.

I hate these celeb chefs who ponce about in their restaurant kitchens then try and write a cookery book for a domestic environment. The recipes don't translate. I am just glad I didn't buy his book.

I have emailed Heston's PR company with a query regarding this recipe - let's see if I get an answer.

RE*AC*TOR

haven't tried the mushroom ketchup recipe, but i have bought one from fothergills in blanchardstown

However, in defense of Heston - his methodology for cooking pizza at home is absolutely genius (basically cooking on the inverted base of a red hot cast iron pan under your grill).

Also I've done one of his terrine recipes which was superb.

Minder

Made a second batch of mushroom ketchup - with a huge reduction in the salt. This batch is much better and there was no reduction in the volume of juice recovered.

Steak & Chips tonight with mushroom ketchup.