Mushroom Heaven

I first tasted mushroom ketchup in a pub in Devon. It wasn’t listed on the menu, which is probably just as well, because had I seen it in print I might have dismissed it as another metropolitan fad – the sort of thing you expect to find served with kale foam in Islington. But no, this arrived beside a steak. A magnificent slab of beef, charred and juicy, suddenly elevated by a dark spoonful of mystery paste. I thought at first it might be burnt onion, or possibly the residue from a Labour fiscal forecast. But then I tasted it – and the steak rose to another level entirely. It wasn’t steak and sauce anymore; it was steak and destiny.

Naturally, I asked the kitchen what it was. “Mushroom ketchup,” they replied, with that weary air chefs reserve for customers who think jus is a typo. Mushroom ketchup! I’d always assumed ketchup was supposed to be sticky red gloop for drowning chips, not this mahogany revelation that made a cow taste like Wagner in full cry. It’s the culinary equivalent of discovering that the Victorians, in between building railways and running the Empire, invented the internet and then forgot about it.

The recipe is deceptively straightforward. Chop a mountain of mushrooms, salt them until they weep more than Nigel Farage discovering the EU’s latest growth figures, cook them slowly with vinegar (apple cider, naturally), spices and, if you’re feeling rakish, an anchovy or two. Then reduce it down – and this is the key – until it’s not a sauce but a thick, spoonable, pâté-like consistency. Anything less and you’re left with a watery mess, as unconvincing as a Tory pledge on immigration. No, the glory lies in cooking it until it holds its shape, dark and glossy, ready to be dolloped onto a steak where it can do the job tomato ketchup never could. It's best to finish it off in the oven at 120 degrees till it goes thick as, if you keep boiling it, the stuff pops and spits as the bubbles try to escape, covering you in hot goo.

And that’s the polemical bit: tomato ketchup is children’s food. Sweet, cloying, and fit only for fish fingers and emotional comfort. Mushroom ketchup is the adult version – deep, earthy, and capable of lending even the humblest cut of meat a touch of statesmanship. If tomato ketchup is populism – easy slogans and empty calories – then mushroom ketchup is policy: complex, layered, and actually nourishing. One makes you shout “Stop the boats!” across a pub table; the other makes you pause, savour, and realise that, despite everything, this country once knew how to do things properly.

So let’s resurrect it. Not just as a curiosity in a Devon pub, but as a staple. Because if mushroom ketchup can turn a steak into high art, perhaps there’s hope yet for Britain. Just don’t tell Heinz, or they’ll stick it in a squeezy bottle, call it “artisan”, and charge a fiver a squirt.