On Making Apple Butter

Well last week it was applesauce; this week it is apple butter. I had a mix of about 11 pounds of Ginger Gold, McIntosh, Cortland, and some other forgotten apple. I found the poor forgotten apples in the back of the fridge. I had bought them at the farmers' market several weeks ago when the apples first came out. They had been ignored once the Ginger Gold apples started showing up. I think they might be Paula Red but I'm really not sure. When making applesauce or apple butter my motto is the more varieties the merrier even if you can't remember all their names.

I started chopping up my apples at 11am yesterday. When I chop up the apples I don't chop much out of the apple. I just take the little bit out that has the seeds. I probably don't even have to take the seeds out but I figure that apple seeds have amygdalin in them which is a cyanide compound. Though the amount is probably too low to do anything to me, I figure there is no reason to add such a thing to my diet. The rest of the core and the peels always go into the pot. The cores actually hold a lot of the pectin in the apple. So the more of the core you use, the better the apple butter will set. Many people add the whole core, seeds and all.

I added about a quart of water to all these apples to get them boiling. My 9 quart stock pot was a bit small for them all, but it didn't take long for them to mush down. I cooked them for about half an hour in their pot.

Then they were sent through the strainer to get out all the little bits and peels. You can see the rejected bits coming out in the bowl. My strainer doesn't do a good job in just one pass. I keep sending those rejected bits back through until there is no more sauce coming out the other end. In the end there was about 7 quarts of apple sauce left in my pot. To this I added 2 cups of sugar, 2T of cinnamon, 3/8t allspice, and 1/4t cloves.

It all sounds so simple doesn't it? The reality is that it wasn't. It never is. Recipes make things sound so easy. Nowhere does it tell you that you need a second huge pot as a holding pot for the applesauce. Nothing fits 7 quarts of apple sauce but a huge stock pot (of which I own exactly one) or my canning pot. So the canning pot came out to hold the applesauce until the stock pot was free. I couldn't cook in the canning pot because the bottom is to thin. The apples would burn. The worst part is that everything is still hot as I'm doing this. So when I dropped the bowl of applesauce from the strainer into canning pot, I got splashed with hot sauce. Then it turns out the bowl and the pot are just about the same width. Getting the hot bowl out was quite a feat. Then of course the bowl was boiling hot and covered in applesauce. Recipes never tell you what to do then do they?

Then came the day long stirring. I used the stove turned down low and just stirred it every 15 minutes or so. I wanted to keep it as hot as I could without it burning. Many people use the crock pot. I have a small crock pot. It is only about 3-4 quarts, which just isn't big enough for this batch of apple butter. I think next time I should go for a smaller batch and stick with the crock pot method.

I told you I started at 11am. Well I had a function last night and had to leave around 5pm. There is no way there is time to make apple butter in six hours. I suppose if you stood over it with higher heat and stirred it would work, but who wants to stand over a pot for hours? Not me. After 4pm I filled the crock pot with as much sauce as would fit. The rest went in the fridge. When I got back I added the rest and went to bed.

This morning my apple butter was ready. The old way of telling when it was ready was by using a wooden spoon. If the spoon could stand by itself it was done. I hope the plastic spoon method works just as well. Some people use the plate method. If you put a little on a plate and the liquid doesn't separate around the edges then it is done. I also made sure that it would hold it's shape when spooned up.

I put the contents back into a pot to bring to a good boil. This time it was my smaller pot which is much more manageable. Apple butter boils down to approximately half of its original amount. I did a taste test to see how it was. It needed more sugar and more cinnamon. I added a half cup more of sugar and another tablespoon of cinnamon. Then I let it cook for another 10 minutes are so to see if I got it right. It seemed pretty tasty. Most people use a lot more sugar than I do. Twice as much as I add is probably more normal. I don't like it that sweet. I like to do a taste test instead of following a recipe blindly. What apples you use really makes a big difference in the amount of sugar that needs to be added.

Then it was canning time. I had a nice new gadget for my lids. I had been just throwing them in a little sauce pan to boil but they tend to get all stuck together then they don't seal well. So I now have an extravagence in canning. This time every last one of my jars sealed - all eleven jars. I have almost 7 pints of apple butter. Hmm I wonder if I can eat it all before next apple season. I'm guessing it makes a really good snack with a nice Vermont cheedar.