Like other folks around the country, we decided to make all our Christmas gifts by hand this year. Now that Christmas is over, we can spill the beans about all our making, starting with one of the first things we made: apple butter.
Our apple butter was a big team effort. We used the family technique, handed down from Great-grandma Maxine to Grandma Sheila to David and Zoe this year. “Baba” Knisely picked three kinds of apples from Far Muse, his place in West Virginia. We also got to use our new food mill.
Apple butter takes a long time, but it’s a good project for a beginning canner. Start with whole apples (keeping in mind they need be neither pretty nor ripe- lots of places will sell or give away the kind of apples you want to use in the fall). Our apples were small, so we cut most of them in half or in quarters, and tossed them into a large stock pot with a little water, a little apple cider, and a touch of apple cider vinegar that helps them break down a little quicker.
This mix doesn’t look pretty, but it’s what makes apple butter “buttery”. The cores and skins and the green apples contain a lot of pectin, which is a natural gelling agent. I didn’t boil this mixture long enough the first time I did it, which resulted in yummy apple sauce, but runny apple butter.
Once the apple mash is good and mashed, it’s as simple as putting it through the food mill and back on the stovetop for spicing. Different folks like different spices in apple butter, but I should offer a couple pointers from Grandma Maxine. Cinnamon is the only critical spice, but use a LOT of cinnamon. It should look chocolatey when it’s done, not applesaucey. Our apple sauce:
versus our apple butter:
I would also strongly recommend using half-pint jars for the apple butter, unless you use a lot more than we do. A pint of apple sauce will go in a night, but a pint of apple butter will probably stick around until it goes bad.
We’re going to post separately about the canning process, which has enough details to warrant a post of its own, but first a recap of the apple-butter-specific points:
- Cut up small apples into a stockpot containing a little bit of water, apple cider, and apple cider vinegar. All the apple parts can be included in this apple mash.
- Mill the apple mash through a food mill (we really like our KitchenAid for this). Return the apple sauce to a sauce pan, and spice it with a lot of cinnamon (think in multiples of tablespoons) and optionally some nutmeg, allspice, or ginger.
- Simmer this mixture for at least another hour, possibly longer, until it is creamy and spreadable.
- Proceed with the canning process (more on this later- it’s not hard, it’s just more than we can fit in one post).
Provided you know how to can, it’s that easy. Both times we did it this past fall, it took about three hours from beginning to end.
Tags: apple butter, canning, diy, make