7 ms·

Heinz ketchup is on a whole different level; it's not just that it's the default ketchup (which it is), it's that: 1) When ketchup is called for, there isn't a

• tbranyen 5y ago
  2) Been to plenty of restaraunts that tout house-made ketchup. Sure Heinz has natural recipe variations out now, but the dijon of ketchup would be small batch sourced from garden fresh tomatoes and high end vinegar. I've seen plenty of brands in specialty markets that are more expensive than Heinz for that reason.
  • mbg721 5y ago
    I may be in a bit of a bubble then; I think I've only been to one restaurant that made their own ketchup (for their duck-fat fries, and they were definitely an outlier). I'm sure now that I'm looking out for them, I will now see high-end small-batch ketchups everywhere.
    • saalweachter 5y ago
      I've seen it once or twice. I'm curious how trends will go in the future -- maybe next year will be all about artisanal small-batch ketchups, who knows -- but it wouldn't surprise me if ~everyone who likes ketchup on things is perfectly happy with Heinz 57 and ~most people who want something else for their burgers, fries or steaks want something different. BBQ sauce, mayo, mustard, sriracha, guac, mole... and not just "ketchup, but better". Like, imagine your friend excitedly dragging you to a new restaurant, where they serve their house-made fries with ________. The world of things that can go in that blank is so large I have a hard time imagining "artisanal ketchup" being the thing that wins out.
  • jnwatson 5y ago
    Whataburger uses and now bottles and sells their own ketchup. I think it is phenomenal, and I'm a fan of Heinz.
    • SOLAR_FIELDS 5y ago
      I was looking for Whataburger as a counterexample here to the sentiment that there are no widespread Heinz alternatives and found it in your comment. It’s the perfect counterexample to OP’s comment in multiple ways - 1. It’s widespread (not even artisanal) in the regions it is deployed in. I can walk into my neighborhood grocery store in Texas and always expect to see Whataburger Spicy Ketchup in the condiment aisle. 2. The spicy ketchup is a genuinely superior product to Heinz. It just straight up tastes better, feels less sugary, and it’s far enough ahead in quality that I actively seek it out over “regular” ketchup.
  • uranium 5y ago
    Humor piece about restaurants that make their own ketchup: http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/we-do-our-own-little-take-on-ketchup http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/we-do-our-own-li...
• Nullabillity 5y ago
  Curious, here in Sweden I'd say Heinz is pretty close to the bottom of the supermarket ketchup totem pole, while Coke/Pepsi have their usual near-duopoly.
  • dagw 5y ago
    Sweden I'd say Heinz is pretty close to the bottom of the supermarket ketchup totem pole Really? I'd say it's nr 2 after Felix.
    • Nullabillity 5y ago
      I'd put Slotts in between the two, at least.
• xemoka 5y ago
  Perhaps not fancy, but French’s ketchup is much better, at least in Canada. Less sweet, more tomato flavour.
• biztos 5y ago
  In Europe it’s pretty common to have non-Heinz ketchup, of which there are many[0] kinds[1]. Even in America, where Heinz is super popular, I can remember eating other[2] ketchups as far back as the 1980’s. And nowadays even my supermarket has fancy ketchups here in rural California, though that may be a CA thing. 0: https://hungarianmeatmarket.com/product/univer-ketchup/ https://hungarianmeatmarket.com/product/univer-ketchup/ 1: https://www.google.com/search?q=dutch+catsup&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari https://www.google.com/search?q=dutch+catsup&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF... 2: https://www.delmonte.com/products/tomatoes/condiments/ketchup https://www.delmonte.com/products/tomatoes/condiments/ketchu...
  • Scoundreller 5y ago
    Heinz hurt itself a little bit when they stopped making it with Canadian tomatoes and shut down a plant here, then a (US-based!) competitor (French’s) grabbed some market-share at the low end with a Canadian-based product. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/french-s-heinz-ketchup-leamington-sales-1.5102789 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/french-s-heinz-ketchup-leam...
    • gscho 5y ago
      I much prefer French's and this news article makes it taste even better!
  • qw 5y ago
    The same applies to Norway. The most popular ketchup is not even Heinz, but a national brand https://meny.no/varer/middagstilbehor/ketchup-og-sennep/ketchup https://meny.no/varer/middagstilbehor/ketchup-og-sennep/ketc...
    • stolsvik 5y ago
      Idun Ketchup FTW! Their new unsweetened variant, also with less salt and no preservatives, is pretty good and should be export material!
  • animal531 5y ago
• vinylkey 5y ago
  For anyone interested, this is a pretty interesting read about Ketchup and Heinz: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/09/06/the-ketchup-conundrum https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/09/06/the-ketchup-co...
• hyperbovine 5y ago
  3) Thanks to us all being fed a steady diet of Heinz ketchup since we were in the womb, all other forms of ketchup taste wrong.
• s5300 5y ago
  Perhaps it's a regional thing, but there are definitely places where Red-Gold usage comes close to Heinz. I'd still say Heinz is dominant in said regions, but Red Gold does see usage, and I don't think it's just because of a price difference. Personally, I like Red Gold on fries more than Heinz. Couldn't explain why very easily as I'm not one to use food terms. Maybe a bit more acidic?
• dragonwriter 5y ago
  > There are no Fancy Dijon Ketchups. Yeah, there are. Lots, actually. > The food snobs don't have an artisan brand they like better Sure, they do (lots of them—as with mustards contrasted with basic French’s yellow, plenty of different styles—for different foodies, some that are refinements of the mass market style, e.g., Annie’s Organics entry, but lots that go with more distinct flavor, especially spice, profiles; Maya Kaimal Spicy Ketchup would be an example in this category.) What there might not be is a Grey Poupon equivalent, a succesfully mass-marketed mass-appeal entry brand to the not-the-basic-thing segment.
  • zarzavat 5y ago
    The fancy Dijon ketchup never tastes better though. It just tastes different, and sometimes worse. Heinz has had decades and armies of food scientists and tasters to dial in their recipe. The only way to compete with that is to make a ketchup that is less appealing to the average person but more appealing to some niche subset of people (e.g. crank up or down the acidity or sweetness).
    • smsm42 5y ago
      > he only way to compete with that is to make a ketchup that is less appealing to the average person but more appealing to some niche subset of people You sound like it's some kind of bizzarre weird strategy that only few insane weirdos would try. As in fact that's how most of the food brands (by number, not by volume) would work - find your niche and serve it. And not only food, of course. Some produce average food for "average person", some produce excellent food for people that value it. That's how it has always been.
      • zarzavat 5y ago
        I don't agree. The reason that average people eat average quality food is because they get paid average wages, not because they don't value the good stuff. For instance, pretty much anybody will prefer high quality ice cream to basic ice cream, but the reason that basic ice cream still exists is because the fancy stuff costs 5x more. The problem with making a "fancy" ketchup is that ketchup is a completely artificial food. The quality of a ketchup is in how balanced it is. And balancing a ketchup is a fixed cost not a marginal cost. Whoever makes the most revenue will have the best ketchup.
• jjav 5y ago
  > There are no Fancy Dijon Ketchups. The food snobs don't have an artisan brand they like better; Heinz is as good as it gets. Sure there are. There's lots of alternative ketchups both on the health scale (less or no high fructose corn syrup) and taste scale (spicier, smokier, you name it). I use ketchup semi-regularly but haven't bought the Heinz type in ages (primarily to avoid so much fructose, but it's also fun to experiment with the different flavors).
• jcpham2 5y ago
  Tiptree from England, it’s on Amazon we do have preferences I put Ketchup on my Catsup
• kelnos 5y ago
  I grew up on Heinz, but nowadays it tastes overly processed and heavy (and too sweet) to me. I'll usually get Annie's if it's available. I'll still eat Heinz if that's what's there, but I don't prefer it.
  • throwawayboise 5y ago
    Hunt's, and Red Gold are two larger brands that I see frequently.
• jonahrd 5y ago
  Just an anecdotal response: In Quebec there is a pretty proud history of a much different style of ketchup, which is much sweeter with bigger chunks of tomatoes. It's not uncommon to see traditional-style ketchup options in restaurants and at grocery stores.
• boulos 5y ago
  To add to dragonwriter’s response, I raise you Sir Kensington’s [1]. They’re popular in San Francisco (used at Super Duper Burgers, for example) and available at Whole Foods and on Good Eggs. Even Heinz offers its own organic variant [2], but IIRC it’s not particularly different from the regular. Finally, the category also includes tomato “jam” (and some might include tomato chutney), tomato-based BBQ sauces, and even tomato-based salsa (commonly used for egg dishes in place of ketchup). [1] https://www.sirkensingtons.com/product/ketchup https://www.sirkensingtons.com/product/ketchup [2] https://www.heinz.com/product/00013000008990 https://www.heinz.com/product/00013000008990
• smsm42 5y ago
  There are niche ketchups. I buy them from time to time - since regular ones (including Heinz) have too high sugar content, and also I don't like the taste of Heinz one. So yes, there are different ketchups - and there are different soft drinks too, by the way. Whole Foods has over 10 brands of ketchup: https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/search?text=ketchup https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/search?text=ketchup including their own "365" label. It suggests to me if everybody were buying Heinz, they probably wouldn't bother doing their private label?
• shakil 5y ago
  In India, and stretching into the Indian diaspora worldwide, Maggi Hot and Sweet sauce became extremely popular, and for some things such as samosas you can almost never use the regular Heinz ketchup - it has to be paired with Maggi Hot and Sweet.
  • ngc248 5y ago
    Yeah, heinz tastes weird ... The Indian palate is more used to the Maggi ketchup/sauce taste profile
  • LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
    Funny. As a german I avoid anything Maggi, while spicing up my pizzas ('Diavolo' which is basically a Pizza Salami with some added red onion stripes and pepperoni) with varying tandoori spice mixes, sometimes chili in addition, about 2 dozen jalapeno slices and Sri Racha :-)
• AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  > The food snobs don't have an artisan brand they like better; Heinz is as good as it gets. I'm not convinced that's the case. I mean, yeah, I buy Heinz to go with fries or on my beyond burger, but for a brief time I made my own ketchup using a very simple recipe I found on a youtube channel but substituting my own spice blend and it was amazing. In the end though my palette is not very picky and my inherent laziness won out. So since I know ketchup can be better than Heinz, I have to expect that there is in fact a fancy branded ketchup out there that is.
• r00fus 5y ago
  I haven't had Heinz on my table for years and I have young kids.
• mustacheemperor 5y ago
  Bit of a food snob here, I usually buy a "fancy" alternative to Heinz even if it's just the Annie's Organic bottle that's also mass-manufactured but to me has a richer vegetable taste and less saccharine sweetness to it. Heinz tastes a bit too much like HFCS-sweetened tomato frosting to me.
  • peapicker 5y ago
    Been using Heinz organic ketchup w real sugar (no hfcs) for quite awhile. Tastes great - same grams of sugar per serving as Annies.
• thereare5lights 5y ago
  > Maybe there are situations where no hot sauce but sriracha will do, but that's much rarer in the US There are many cases where sriracha not not general hot sauce would work such as dim sum and pho. And before you counter with "in the US", I'd argue that Huy Fong is much more dominant in California than in the US at large and in California, cuisines where only sriracha type hot sauce and not just any general hot sauce works are much more common.
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• goldcd 5y ago
  But I disagree - I used to buy Heinz by default, but switched to "Wilkin & Sons Tiptree Tomato Sauce" Heinz is a 'default' - and absence of it used to indicate the replacement was worse. Now - plenty of better options, just maybe without the brand recognition. Heinz is a good baseline - you know what you're getting.