Sugar Free Barbeque Sauce

My homemade ketchup absconded in the night with an Alabama BBQ and became a sweet, spicy barbeque sauce. I'd like to think it's because it knew what it wanted to be, and not because I didn't follow the original recipe...

The original Homemade Ketchup recipe from The Paupered Chef

• 6 pounds tomatoes, roughly chopped
• 4 onions, sliced (mixture of red and white)
• 1 jalapeno pepper, stemmed, seeded, and chopped
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 3/4 cup cider vinegar
• 1/4 teaspoon dry mustard
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 1/2 teaspoons whole allspice
• 1 1/2 teaspoons whole cloves
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground mace
• 1 1/2 teaspoons celery seeds
• 1 1/2 teaspoons black peppercorns
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 garlic clove, peeled and bruised
• cayenne
• salt

The Random version for Sugar Free Barbeque Sauce (made about 5 cups - some for the fridge, some for the freezer):

• 6 pounds tomatoes, roughly chopped
• 2 onions, sliced (1 red and 1 white)
• 2 mystery peppers from my CSA (medium heat)
  
• 1 jalapeno pepper, stemmed, seeded, and chopped
• 3-4 TB molasses
• 1/2 tsp pure stevia extract (I'm a huge fan of NuNaturals stevia)
  
• 3/4 cup cider vinegar
• 1/4 teaspoon dry mustard
• 1 cinnamon stick
• About 1/2 tsp ground allspice
• pinch of ground cloves
• celery salt to taste
  
• 1 tsp crushed peppercorns
  
• 1 garlic clove, peeled and bruised

I mixed all the ingredients in a non-reactive saucepan over medium heat and covered it. When it began to bubble, I lowered the heat and then ignored it for about two hours.

I blended it using an immersion blender and then strained it through a fine mesh metal colander to remove the tomato and pepper skins.

"Come try my ketchup!" I told my husband who dutifully came to give me his required compliment.

"Hmmm... it tastes like a spicy barbeque sauce."

He was right, it had morphed. "Come try my spicy sweet barbeque sauce!" I amended.

At any rate, it was still a delicious sauce that I'm going to use on my morning eggs instead of Heinz sugar free ketchup. The Paupered Chef version uses a teaball to steep the whole spices in the tomato mixture and then removes it. My version blends it all in, changing the flavor from a milder ketchup to a stronger barbeque flavor. The small amount of molasses of course contains sugar, but it's spread over 5 cups of sauce.