Apple butter recipes

[gfron1]

For some reason everyone is giving me their excess! First it was the pomegranates, then ginger, then...well you get the idea. I now have a huge box of apples and I was thinking I would make apple butter. But, I've never made it before. Does anyone have a recipe that is a must-do? Once I make it, I'll sneak on over to THIS TOPIC from earlier this year on what to do with it all. Thanks.

[Tri2Cook]

I don't have a "must do" recipe. I just take apples, apple juice, sugar (I've used white, brown and maple sugars in various renditions) and spices, slowly cook 'til brown and velvety and call it good enough. Apple butter on hot biscuits with brown butter (or just plain butter for that matter)... where's the *drool* smilie?

Edited November 20, 2008 by Tri2Cook (log)

[Beebs]

Oh good, I'm glad someone brought this up! I've been dying to make apple butter but just haven't had time or found a good recipe. I'd like to make a slow-cooker version, so I can infuse my home with the lovely spicy-apple fragrance at the same time. Does it matter what kind of apples I use? I Googled "apple butter recipes" and found that some call for apple juice and others don't - does it make a difference? I'm thinking apple butter with bourbon might be good - anyone tried it?

[andiesenji]

Nobody does apple butter better than the Amish or Pennsylvania Dutch

Here is a recipe I have used for years, with great results.

PENNSYLVANIA DUTCH/ AMISH APPLE BUTTER

6 quarts cider

10 lbs. apples

2 lbs. granulated sugar (See tip below)

2 pounds brown sugar

2 tablespoons ground allspice

2 tablespoons ground cloves

3 tablespoons ground cinnamon.

1 tablespoon ground mace

1/2 tablespoon ground white pepper

Wash and quarter apples. DO NOT PEEL OR CORE!

Boil the cider for 20 min. then put apples into kettle with

cider and cook until apples are tender.

Press through a sieve to remove skin and seeds.

Add sugar and spices to pulp. cook until as thick as desired ( a soft paste);

stirring frequently tp prevent burning.

Pour into crock or glass jars. Process in water batch for 15 minutes.

Tip: Because apples vary in sweetness, add only 1/2 the amount of sugar to start,

add the rest as needed to adjust the sweetness.

Variations:

To part of the butter add ground pecans or walnuts - 1/4 cup per quart of apple butter and cook an additional 30 to 50 minutes. Also mashed chestnuts may be added.

Grind fresh cranberries in a food mill, cook with sugar, (1/2 cup per cup of ground cranberries)

and mix with apple butter (1/2 cup to each pint of apple butter) and cook for 30 minutes.

Other fruits may be mixed with the apple butter. Dried fruits should be stewed and pressed through a sieve - prunes, pears, gooseberries, beach plums and crabapples.

Those are the variations that were in the original recipe. I should add that I have added variations of my own from time to time.

Some ginger after it has been candied, finely chopped and mixed into some of the apple butter - to taste - I really can't recall how much I added - it depends on how spicy the ginger.

I have also added mango pulp - I too am often gifted with lots of fruits - persimmons - that was a brilliant combo.

It's easy enough to try various combinations, this recipe produces a large enough batch that one can experiment.

Also and very important.

You do not have to jar and process this immediately. I often cook it part way then place in a large Cambro container and freeze it until I am ready to finish it. It freezes nicely and if one doesn't want to go to the bother of canning, (and the freezer space is available) it will keep in the freezer for many months.

Edited November 20, 2008 by andiesenji (log)

[RobertCollins]

We do apple butter every couple years and it is fun as well as tastes great!

We start with a bunch of apples [our Calderon will hold about 4 bushel] water to cover and a slow fire burned with a good base of coals. I would post a picture here but apparently the images must be on the sight before I can post them.

We peel, core and slice the quantity we wish to cook and add with the water to our pot. Then we take turns stirring; about 10 hours to start thickening beyond apple sauce. Then the cinnamon sticks are added, a couple hours later when the butter is thickened the sugar is added while stirring constantly now. At this point the apple butter is for all intents done and so we start decanting and carrying in to be canned.

Our recipe is the simple one of the German 1st generation family my wife is from, to around 8-10 gallons of apple slices, about 7-10 lbs of sugar and like 12 or 15 cinnimon sticks, water as needed -to cover when starting. Please note that the time will vary by the type of apples you use. As we live in Washington State we are mostly stuck with the commercial stuff grown here for export, not the wonderful cooking and eating varieties available back east.

Now the good part. while the canning is being finished; a huge amount of potatoes are being fried along with pork chops or brats or even both as well as biscuits. The potatoes are served with great big spoonfuls of hot fresh apple butter over the top. That is the reward for having smoke in your eyes all day.

Another aside, when we made this in the 70s my wife and I were thinking as the church of what was happening then said in its gospel that sugar was bad. We pulled a gallon out and finished it separately on the stove but with about 1/2 the sugar.

We could not tell the difference then at all or hardly anyway. Six months later the low sugar stuff was funny tasting and at a year there was no doubt it was bad. Seems that sugar is important not so much for taste but as a preservative.

We tend to have friends over in and out thru out the day to help and come supper, they are all there to share!

Edited November 21, 2008 by RobertCollins (log)

[gfron1]

I've got my pot on as I type. Thanks for all the suggestions.

[McAuliflower]

I just finished a honey saffron cinnamon apple butter batch at the tale end of my apple sauce making.

I burned the crap out of my hands stirring it though (it's like napalm!)! Tomorrow's next batch will get the crock pot method!

For canning it- I was surprised to see that apple butter requires a shorter processing time than apple sauce (10 min vs 20 min) according to my ball book.

[gfron1]

Glad you said that about canning. That's my project of the day. I did the fairly traditional recipe above (Amish), but added a 1/4 cup of 6 balsamic. Sounds odd, but the sweetness of 6 year went really well with the apples.

[gfron1]

I have continued using the recipe posted by Andie above. I've cut back on the spices since I find them too overpowering for the apples. Today I am doing a batch with habañero.

[Ktepi]

What I did this year -- and I don't measure, per se, or keep track of recipes, so I can only tell you what I actually did --

Fill a 5-quart crockpot with an assortment of peeled, cored apples. Leave it on low overnight. Add more peeled, cored apples to fill the space the overnight cooking made available, and turn it to high for a couple hours until they've broken down too.

Add two bottles of good beer -- I used a bottle of Harpoon's IPA and a bottle of Dogfish Head's Indian Brown Ale.

Add two small seedless or de-seeded oranges, ground up.

Add several cups of sugar, probably 3.

Continue cooking on high, uncovered, until it's dark and sticky, stirring first to incorporate the beer and later to keep it cooking evenly.

This was made as a change of pace from regular apple butter, since I had a whole bunch of apples to use up and still had some apple butter left from last year.

[FoodMuse]

I'm going to a Brooklyn Food Swap this week.

Deets:

"Guests bring:

1. Larder goods you made (those jams, pickles, kimchi, preserves, butters, chutneys you’ve compulsively canned over the summer)

2. A homemade (i.e. wrapped) food unit for trade (think a bag of crackers, batch of outta-this-world cookies, a loaf of bread, dried foods, ummm…whatevs, just so long as you made it) "

I'm bringing 1 jar of my pickles and 2 jars of Papaya Habanero ketchup. I'd like to make an Apple Butter in my slowcooker, but was thinking I might put in a 1 or 2 of my leftover hanbaneros.

Madness? or Genius? I would like to bring something that makes people extra motivated to swap with me. Apple butter is kind of boring, wanting to step it up my game.

Also, I don't have an Apple Butter recipe yet. Been googling it, but don't have much confidence in any Apple Butter crockpot recipes I've see so far.

Anyone have apple butter experience?

Grace

[Chris Hennes]

I'm a fan of habanero in just about anything sweet, I think it's a great idea. An apple butter with a bit of burn sounds great to me!

[andiesenji]

This one on A Year of Slow Cooking works very well with the adjustments of much less sugar.

Read the comments.

As she notes, this takes two days but is well worth the time and effort.

I used a combination of apples, 3 each Braeburn, Jonagold, 4 small russets (seldom available in my area and in my opinion more flavorful than Granny Smith, and two each golden delicious and pink lady.

I used 3/4 cup of brown sugar and 3/4 cup of honey, no white sugar. You can always add more later if it isn't sweet enough for you.

Use a little habanero, add it half way through and after it has cooked for awhile, taste it and add more if you think it necessary.

I've made applesauce with rocoto or manzano peppers as they have a sort of apple flavor to begin with. - important to remove the seeds because unlike other peppers they are black and better not to have black flakes in your apple sauce or apple butter.

Edited October 23, 2010 by andiesenji (log)

[FoodMuse]

Apples are in the slowcooker on high with very little sugar (these were very sweet macintosh) and a sprinkling of allspice,cinnamonand clove.

@andiesenji I'll take your advice and add a little habanero halfway through cooking then taste later.

@Chris Agreed. We shall see.

[jedovaty]

Hi:

Long story short, adding any amount of apple cider vinegar to apple butter recipe is a bad idea.  I now have something that smells and tastes like apple ketchup.  Is it possible to save somehow?

Everything tasted fantastic until the last ~30 minutes of the reduction, pretty much at the moment the apples went from sauce to the thick caramel butter consistency it became ketchup.  UGH.  Such a waste of delicious apples

Thank you for any help.

Edited November 6, 2019 by Smithy
Adjusted title (log)

[heidih]

Not sure of your quantity and unclear what recipe would add vinegar (as opposed to apple cider)....but at this point you could add an interesting sweetener (a dark honey, sorghum - like that) OR just use it in savory applications. Not the answer you want I'm sure ! Other ideas from members will materialize.  Here is a prior interesting topic  https://forums.egullet.org/topic/120083-killer-apple-butter-recipes/

 

[Tri2Cook]

I don't have any ideas for saving your apple butter but from the category of looking at things on the bright side, apple ketchup sounds pretty amazing to me. I'm thinking a burger with the patty made from pork instead of beef with a good cheddar and some maple bacon... dammit, I really don't need to be making apple ketchup right now. 

[teonzo]

Try adding a pinch of baking soda to a small amount (couple spoons) of hot apple butter, mix, wait a bit, then taste what happens.

 

 

 

Teo

 

[jedovaty]

Nearly 5lbs of apples cooked down to just under 2 pints (I think pints.. the second-to-smallest ball jars, filled up 3.5 of them).  It's not much at all.. except... 5lbs of farmer's market apples.  @heidih, I'll try a little bit with more sweetener, @teonzo I'll try with baking soda, and in both cases we'll see what happens.  @Tri2Cook, good idea, thank you!  I'll give it a go - maybe combine the sweet and pork ideas, I enjoy a little honey on pork, so perhaps some honey and this ketchapple/apptchup/kepple/appupp butter. 

 

Looking up uses for apple butter, I see some people turn it into a bbq sauce. This might work, too.  Apple ketchup is not my thing, kind of like raisins in chocolate chip cookies.  Dip apples into ketchup and that's almost what this tastes like 🤢

Thanks for the ideas and help!

Edited November 6, 2019 by jedovaty (log)

[kayb]

I'm intrigued by this. I always, always use apple cider in the first step of cooking apples for my apple butter, and have never noticed a ketchupy taste to the finished product.

 

To the best of my recollection, it's 5 pounds of apples, quartered (unpeeled, uncored), 1/3 cup cider vinegar, 3 cups sugar. Cook until apples are falling apart. Run through food mill to remove skins, seeds. Cook resultant puree with more sugar, and spices. The vinegar seems to give it a depth of flavor I've not achieved any other way.

 

[jedovaty]

2 hours ago, kayb said:

I'm intrigued by this. I always, always use apple cider in the first step of cooking apples for my apple butter, and have never noticed a ketchupy taste to the finished product.

 

To the best of my recollection, it's 5 pounds of apples, quartered (unpeeled, uncored), 1/3 cup cider vinegar, 3 cups sugar. Cook until apples are falling apart. Run through food mill to remove skins, seeds. Cook resultant puree with more sugar, and spices. The vinegar seems to give it a depth of flavor I've not achieved any other way.

 

That's generally what I did, just lower quantity of vinegar and sugar - my apples were on the sweet side.  I did add a few cups of water instead of cider in the first boil, and the slow-cooker part took about 24 hours to reduce because of that.

I got another idea what to do - I'll mix with a bit of horseradish and try with some turkey.  Growing up, we would eat turkey meat from soup that was accompanied by an apple/horseradish mix - and, we'd sneak some ketchup, too, as dad did NOT approve of ketchup in the household..!

[TdeV]

I'm interested to hear the results of your tests, @jedovaty.

[lemniscate]

I wonder if adding a sweeter acid, like lemon juice might tame that taste.  Maybe the apples were too sweet and the sugars caramelized more during cooking.

[jedovaty]

Two year follow up.  I forgot about these in my fridge, and needed the jars earlier this year.  Opened them up, greeted by the aroma of apple ketchup.  Mixed some with ketchup and mustard, made for an interesting spread atop a chicken sausage from costco.  Rest transferred into container which I promptly forgot about and the contents spoiled, and as I was cleaning them out yesterday, I remembered this thread. 

 

I think with horseradish it would've been good pairing for turkey, however, I had neither turkey nor horseradish on hand at the time.  Adding lemon or lime would have made an interesting flavor combination as well.  Conclusion: I will omit apple cider next time, I think this causes the ketchup association with my senses.

[blue_dolphin]

I think I would like your apple stuff mixed with a sharp, grainy mustard on sausages with sauerkraut.  

In Deep Run Roots, Vivian Howard has a recipe for something she calls apple mustard which is kind of a kicked-up apple butter.  She serves it with a charred cabbage & apple slaw and as a dip for sausage balls.  I liked it a lot. The recipe is available online at this link in case you ever want to take it in that direction.