Ketchup vs tomato sauce in homemade sauce

[wahoowad]

I sometimes whip together a little homebrew vinegar based sauce for my pulled pork. What would be different if I switched to tomato sauce, or maybe even tomato paste? I'd like to get my sauce to be a more of a mixture of basic ingredients and not rely on the developed flavor of the ketchup.

I get it that a prepared ketchup would contribute a little more salt and sugar, and a bunch of other ingredients I don't know really know, so I might increase the small amounts of salt and sugar I already add.

Any thoughts on the difference between using tomato sauce vs. paste to get the tomato part I want in the sauce?

 

[Gary Tomato]

I’ve been making Myron’s Basic Vinegar sauce for a few years and recently substituted sauce for the ketchup because we had run out and hadn’t had a chance to refill. The result was a less flavorful and thinner sauce, I could probably work around that somehow by reducing with heat or adding paste but, IMHO, easier to just use ketchup!

 

[keeperofsecrets]

When I first started making my own sauces, almost all of them used ketchup in one form or another. I had the same considerations that are expressed here regarding additional salt or other ingredients and how that would impact my final product. Because of that, I decided to make my own ketchup so I could control for the additional flavors. There are several recipes on the interwebs for ketchup (or catsup)...I just found one that I could make my own, and incorporated it into my sauce recipe.