Got this at a Philippine grocery a few blocks from my house in Los Angeles. Price: $1.59. The lady behind the counter called it "banana ketchup," and that's pretty much what it is, with the same basic ingredients – sugar, vinegar, salt, and spices – as the tomato stuff, but with bananas substituted for the red fruit base.
There are a bunch of varieties from Jufran. The product is listed at Ketchupworld.com, with both regular and hot versions; neither of these seem to be the one I found – the ingredients listed for both are different. The ketchup site gets $3.50 for a mail-ordered bottle. Searching around, it seems that the product has multiple incarnations, with different labeling – some designated as "sauce," others as "ketchup," and some using bright red food coloring to make them look more like the real thing. Mine is marked as "The Original," so I'll go with that.
How did ours taste? Fantastic: a little spicy, a little sweet – with the same consistency as tomato ketchup. I had mine on a big hunk of Turkey breast. Whupped the daylights out of cranberry sauce.
All hail the new King of Condiments.
Here's a link to a brief wikipedia entry on banana ketchup.
Tags: Banana Culture, Banana Recipes
This sounds very interesting. I would think it would be great on french fries and burgers as well. I will keep an eye out for it. Can’t wait to try it.
Weird. It should be banana ketchup and it reads banana sauce.
http://bashhh.blogspot.com
I wonder why “The lady behind the counter called it “banana ketchup,” and that’s pretty much what it is, with the same basic ingredients – sugar, vinegar, salt, and spices – as the tomato stuff, but with bananas substituted for the red fruit base.” Anyway thanks for this post. I enjoyed reading it.
-krisha-