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It’s hard to find any apple butter, let alone good apple butter in the grocery store these days. Making apple butter is a great way to preserve the fruits of an apple harvest.
In contrast to what the name implies, there is no “butter” in apple butter. The name comes from its smooth and buttery texture.
Apple butter is delicious on buttered toast. Although apple butter takes time to make (the sauce is slow cooked for at least an hour), the upfront part is easy. You do not have to peel or core the apples.
The pectin for firming up the resulting jam resides mostly in the cores and there is a lot of flavor in the apple peels. After the first cooking, these parts get discarded as the pulp is run through a food mill.
This recipe produces a traditional apple butter, which is both sweet and sour, the addition of cider vinegar just intensifying the flavor and giving it its tangy edge. It’s seasoned with cinnamon, cloves, allspice and lemon.
Apple Butter Recipe
Gravenstein are the best apples to use for apple butter, if you can find them. They usually ripen mid summer. Granny Smiths work well too.
This recipe produces an apple butter with a sweet and sour, deep rich flavor.
Ingredients
- 4 pounds of good cooking apples (we use Granny Smith or Gravenstein)
- 1 cup apple cider vinegar
- 2 cups water
- Sugar (about 4 cups, see cooking instructions)
- Salt
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1/2 teaspoon allspice
- Zest and juice of 1 lemon
Special equipment:
- 1 wide 8-quart pan (Stainless steel or copper with stainless steel lining)
- A food mill
or a chinois sieve
- A large (8 cup) measuring cup pourer
- 6-8 8-ounce canning jars
Method
Preparing the Fruit
1 Cut the apples into quarters, without peeling or coring them. (Much of the pectin is in the cores and flavor in the peels). Cut out damaged parts.
First Stage of Cooking
2 Cook the apples: Put the quartered apples into large pot, add the vinegar and water, cover, bring to a boil, reduce heat to simmer, cook until apples are soft, about 20 minutes. Remove from heat.
Purée apples and add the sugar and spices
3 Purée the apples through a food mill or chinois: Ladle apple mixture (cooked apples and liquid) into a chinois sieve (or food mill) and using a pestle force pulp from the chinois into a large bowl below.
4 Add sugar, spices, lemon zest, and juice: Measure resulting puree. Add 1/2 cup of sugar for each cup of apple pulp. Stir to dissolve sugar. Add a dash of salt, and the cinnamon, ground cloves, allspice, lemon rind and juice. Taste and adjust seasonings if necessary.
Second Stage of Cooking
5 Cook the apple mixture, stirring often: Cook the apple sugar mixture uncovered in a large, wide, thick-bottomed pot on medium low heat, stirring often to prevent burning. Scrape the bottom of the pot while you stir to make sure a crust is not forming at the bottom.
Cook until thick and smooth (about 1 to 2 hours). A small bit spooned onto a chilled (in the freezer) plate will be thick, not runny.
You can also cook the purée on low heat, stirring only occasionally, but this will take much longer as stirring encourages evaporation. (Note the wider the pan the better, as there is more surface for evaporation.)
As an alternative to stovetop cooking you can cook the purée uncovered in a microwave, on medium heat setting to simmer, for around 30 minutes. If you do this, monitor the cooking every 5 or 10 minutes. Microwaves vary in their power.
Canning
6 Sterilize canning jars: There are several ways to sterilize your jars for canning.
- You can run them through a short cycle on your dishwasher.
- You can place them in a large pot (12 quart) of water on top of a steaming rack (so they don't touch the bottom of the pan), and bring the water to a boil for 10 minutes.
- Or you can rinse out the jars, dry them, and place them, without lids, in a 200°F oven for 10 minutes.
7 Pour the apple butter into hot, sterilized jars and seal. If you plan to store the apple butter un-refrigerated, make sure to follow proper canning procedures.
Before applying the lids, sterilize the lids by placing them in a bowl and pouring boiling water over them. Wipe the rims of the jars clean before applying the lids.
I use a hot water bath for 10 minutes to ensure a good seal.
As the jars cool, you should hear the lids "popping" as they seal the jars.
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Elise Bauer is the founder of Simply Recipes. Elise launched Simply Recipes in 2003 as a way to keep track of her family's recipes, and along the way grew it into one of the most popular cooking websites in the world. Elise is dedicated to helping home cooks be successful in the kitchen. Elise is a graduate of Stanford University, and lives in Sacramento, California.
Apple Butter
I made a small batch and loved it.made a large batch . I omited the lemon juice. And used a colender and glass to remove the trash.
I haven’t made this yet as I have a couple of questions: What if I don’t have a food mill? Can I just core and peel the apples? do you have a crockpot version? What is your preference- stove top or crockpot? Our apple tree is in its first year of production and I’m so excited to use some in apple butter!!
Hi Monica,
Congratulations on your apple tree! You can make this by peeling and coring the apples, yes. I’ve done it before where I cook it all in one pot, pureeing the cooked (cored and peeled) apples with an immersion blender. My own preference is to use a slow cooker, because there’s a lot less stirring. You can leave off the lid, or use two wooden spoons to leave the lid ajar so steam escapes and the apple mixture reduces. How many hours will it take in a slow cooker? It really depends on your cooker and the setting you use, but expect it to be at least 4 hours and probably a lot longer. You kind of have to eyeball it.
Ok, I rarely leave negative reviews, but I am so shocked this recipe is so highly rated! (I’m sorry to the author, I really wanted to like it!) 4 cups of sugar is insane! But, you need it to cover the full cup of vinegar (which is not even necessary for making apple butter in the first place). It’s creating a problem only to have to fix it. The result is an uncharacteristic sour punch followed by sickeningly sweetness. It’s just too much of both. Now I have to figure out what to do with it, it’s not horrible, but no one else in the house will eat it but me. So I’m left with the dilemma, do I throw it out now or do I wait for it to go bad and throw it out later.
xxxxxyyyyy
Hi Abi,
We’re sorry you don’t like the apple butter. Did you can it, or is it in the refrigerator? If it’s canned, I’d say let it sit for a while and then open a jar and taste it again. You might find the flavor mellowed, particularly the acidic sharpness. But assuming you did not can it, now you have apple butter you don’t care for very much. In the past, when I had peach butter that was not very peachy, I used it in bar cookies with a streusel topping. Like these or these. And you can freeze your apple butter so you don’t have to use it up all at once. Hope that helps!
Thanks, those are great suggestions!
I don’t like the taste of vinegar , is there anything else that you can use?
Hi Joyce, this apple butter recipe requires the use of a rather lot of vinegar for its signature sweet and sour taste. I’ve seen apple butters that are just boiled down applesauce, that are quite sweet, so maybe that’s the way you might want to go. I would do a search for a different recipe.
Made your apple butter this am. Absolutely delicious and easy to make. I had 10 apples which I needed to use up so this was so perfect. I used Honey Crisp apples and only brown sugar. Wonderful flavor and texture. Thanks so much
xxxxxyyyyy
Great, Julie, I’m so glad you liked the apple butter!