How to pour ketchup.

I learnt this trick when I visited the States in the mid '80s.

From a big guy who looked like a lumberjack as a matter of fact.

This is one of my father's pet peeves: people who hit the bottom of the ketchup bottle. He's been known to go up to complete strangers in restaurants and demonstrate the proper method. So if an old guy who looks a bit like a lumberjack ever accosts you for hitting the ketchup bottle incorrectly...well, I warned you.

Any method works, it all depends on how you want the ketchup to come out of the bottle. All at once or little by little.

Since ketchup becomes less viscous (i.e. flows more easily) the more you agitate it. Hence why, if it's been standing in a bottle for a while, it'll be hard to get out. After a short while of shaking or tapping the bottle in your prefered way it will come out one way or another. That's your trivia lesson for today.

Or indeed, you could bypass this and just get a squeeze-bottle.

I learned on a science show that inserting a straw into the bottle allows air to channel to the bottom. Turn it over and pull the straw out. Flows like water. No banging necessary, however one does have a ketchupy straw to dispose of.

Jimbo, the idea is to hit your hand with the bottle.