me and my friends have a debate about whether ketchup should be stored
in the fridge after opening. i feel it shold as well as every other persin except the gordon brothers, main argue ment is " do u put cold ketchup on hot fries?" i say yeah why not, cool em down. they say no. but thr bottle it self, doesnt say , refridgerate after opening on it either, but mustard and bbq sauce do, and restaraunt keep it out on tables, but they use it faster than a household. and ketchup packets should be bigger, please see what u can find to end our dispute, by the way, heinz is no 1 . sweet baby rays bbq sauce is the bst, from chicago.i tried to find the heinz nome site, but was not successful, please help. oh its ketchup, not catsup for me, and in the fridge to stay fresh
Alpha_King, ketchup lover
Dear A.K.,
I always store my ketchup in the refrigerator because, well, that's where it was stored when I grew up and I figured it was written someplace on the bottle to do that. So I checked and you were right, I didn't see it written anyplace on the bottle that it had to be refrigerated after opening. So I went to the Heinz website, www.heinz.com. but couldn't find info on refrigeration. I couldn't find anything about ketchup at www.hunt-wesson.com . Then I went to www.delmonte.com and found this under answers. "…Ketchup, Chili Sauce, and Seafood Cocktail Sauce will retain their quality for several weeks when stored in the refrigerator. Spoilage will develop over time, and is highly dependent on how long the product is left exposed to the air and upon the temperature at which it is stored." So obviously there is something that will spoil in ketchup, but we just don't know how much time it takes at an average room temperature.
Now I don't know your acquaintances the Gordon brothers from Adam, but these guys could hold the key. (Unless they are two big guys with iron stomachs that can eat a 3-day old sausage pizza that's been sitting out on their coffee table and have absolutely no side effects.) But assuming they are susceptible to food poisoning as easily as the next person, you need to find out what is possibly the oldest ketchup they'd ever eaten that had never been refrigerated, but had gone bad. Was there a mild reaction such as a stomach ache or did they have a violent gut-wrenching reaction that left them nearly spewing out their pancreas'? Obviously this is important to all of us who do use those ketchup bottles left on restaurant tables. Meanwhile I plan on continuing to refrigerate mine. But should you absolutely need warm ketchup for your hot fries you can either microwave a small dish of ketchup for 4 seconds, sacrifice one of your hot fries by immersing it into the ketchup and stirring it around to warm it up, or just sit on some ketchup packets while the fries are cooking.