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
PrintIngredients
- 4 lbs 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 rind, 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.
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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
This was delicious. So much so that the batch I thought would last longer is all gone now. Today I’m making a triple batch. Love your recipes. Thanks so much!
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I used this recipe to make apple butter for my granddaughter. Followed it as written the first time I attempted. The recipe is basically good but i would amend the sugar to read ” sweeten to your own taste”. 4 cups of sugar to 4 pounds of apples, even Granny Smith apples, made my first batch unusable for me.
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Yes I did but I thought that the vinegar was a much too strong. Is there any thing I can put in it now so that I can use it to take a lot of the vinegar taste out?
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Hi Jean, traditional apple butter is supposed to be sweet and sour, but if it is too sour for you, you can balance the acidity of the vinegar by adding more sugar to taste.
I made this twice. The first batch was delicious. I didn’t follow it exactly since I wasn’t canning it but freezing it. The second batch wasn’t as good. I don’t know what I did wrong. I thought I followed it exactly the second time because I was canning it and I wanted to make sure it came out good to give out as gifts The second batch is edible but not good enough to give out as gifts because the vinegar flavor is coming through. The first batch I didn’t have apple cider vinegar so I used some distilled vinegar but not as much as the recipe calls for figuring I was freezing it. I bought apple cider vinegar for the second batch and measured it exactly. Apples from the same tree used in both batches.
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Hi J Gordon, we always have to make adjustments for the specific fruit we are using. Even apple from the same tree can cook up differently. Apple butter is supposed to be sweet and tart. If you are getting too much of the tart, just add a little more sugar until you find the mixture comes into balance for your taste.
First time making apple butter. It’s not something that is common in my country but something I learned to love while I lived in the US. Also my first time canning anything! Easy, delicious and I would highly recommend this.
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I’m so glad you liked it Patricia!