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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 classic apple butter, both sweet and tart, 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
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 have used several types of apples, even added pears to it. I do the apples in the summer and fall by cooking them down to a unsweetened applesauce. Put that in gallon freezer bags and freeze them. I only use domino’s sugar and liquid cinnamon. If I do it in a crockpot, I do add 5 new shinny pennies to give it the beautiful color, but I love doing it in my 30 gallon copper kettle over a woodfire. Oh and I can mine after and it last for years without diminishing the taste.
Hi Elise! This recipe sounds delicious! I can’t wait to try it! I only have Gala apples, though. Seeing as your recipe calls for Granny Smith or Gravenstein apples, would that be a problem or are there some adjustments I can make to compensate? Thanks!
Hi Bella,
Go ahead and use your galas. They are sweeter apples, but this recipe has vinegar to give some nice tartness. Perhaps you could cut back on the sugar just a bit, but not much. Good luck!
Love apple butter. Can crab apples be used instead of cooking apples?
Hello Uel,
You can use crab apples, yes, but I recommend 1 part crab apples : 3 parts regular apples. This is for a few reasons.
1) Crab apples tend to be more tart. This recipe has all that apple cider vinegar, so with crab apples in the mix you may want to reduce that a bit.
2) A lot of crab apples have a mealier texture. I’ve made applesauce with part crab apples and membrillo with 100% crab apples instead of quince, and neither had a texture I was wild about. Your crab apples may be mild and silky, though.
3) Crab apples will give you a smaller yield of pulp per cup than regular apples.
If you do make this with crab apples (I assume they are not in season now for you and you are dreaming up things for the future), please report back–we’d love to hear how it went. Good luck!
I made this today and love it. The recipe is easy to follow and turned out great.
xxxxxyyyyy
This apple butter is great!!! Sweet and tart, just right. Don’t listen to the “not using vinegar” nonsense in other reviews. They must have never had real apple butter. This recipe is sweet with that nice tangy kick in the jaw. My only advice, is to taste the butter as you add the sugar 1/2 cup at a time. Your apples may be a little sweeter or tarter.
xxxxxyyyyy