Apple Butter (without any actual butter!)

I had access to free apples (thanks to Brenda on the library board) and Jess suggested we try making Apple Butter. A quick Google search using the imaginative key words "apple butter" and I ended up picking the first recipe that shows up as a place to start. (http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/apple_butter/) Most recipes that come up seem fairly similar, but the primary reason I chose this one was that it was cooked for a couple hours on the stove instead of overnight in a crockpot. "Instant" gratification I guess.

We started with only 2 pounds of apples, so the ingredients were modified accordingly:
2 pounds of apples (free from a backyard, so I don't know what type)
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1 cup water

Cut off the bad spots, cut the apples into quarters, throw it all into the pot - peels, cores, and all. That's my Grandma O's old pot, by the way. It's seen a few recipes for sure!

Cover the pot, bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for about 20 minutes until the apples are soft. I'm not sure of the purpose of the apple cider vinegar, though I'm guessing it's to help break down the peels and cores, but WARNING it kind of makes the kitchen stink. Then voila!, a pot of stinky, funny coloured, mushy apples. Mmmm, sounds delish...

Luckily my mom has the foodmill contraption, so it makes it really easy to turn that apple mash into apple sauce. The original recipe didn't say if you were supposed to drain off the vinegar and water that you added for cooking, so it went in too. (I'm laughing because it's funny to be photographed trying to be serious.)

It's quite an amazing machine as it does pull out all the pulp and juice and you are just left with really dry peels and seeds to throw out. The 2 pounds of apples resulted in about 2 cups of apple sauce, so based on the recipe, I added:
1 cup sugar
a dash of salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon allspice
grated rind and juice of 1 lemon

If you check out the original recipe I based this one, you'll notice I didn't add any ground cloves. That's because Mom didn't have any. Jeez, when you're getting all this stuff for free, you'd think she could at least supply everything you need. Apparently, allspice contains cloves, so we had some of the flavour we needed anyway.

It turns a nice dark colour and then you have to cook it some more on medium low heat.

The recipe said to stir it constantly (I did not) to prevent burning and it would take 1 to 2 hours (it did not). It probably didn't take as long because it was a really big pot and we didn't have that much sauce to start with, so it took only about 40 minutes this time. I did stir it every few minutes, but it doesn't really require constant attention. Cook until thick and to test this you smear it onto a plate chilled in the freezer.

 

Using that plate seemed to be rather unnecessary. We thought it looked pretty thick, so tested it out and yep, it stuck to a plate without falling off when held vertically. Really, if you've done some basic cooking, you'll probably have a good idea of when it's thick enough. We ended up with about 1.5 cups of cooked apple butter. 

It still had the apple sauce texture, so we used an immersion blender to smooth it out a bit more. I would actually recommend doing this to the apple sauce before you cook-to-reduce just so it's easier to blend.

Since it is so thick, there is no "pouring" into jars and certainly don't bother with a funnel (that just ended up a mess). It does have the texture of room-temperature butter, so it's rather a process of "smearing" into the jars. These were old sampler jars of jam, so they didn't seal and we'll just have to store them in the fridge. 

Rachel was the first taster and then we used it on the pork chops we had for dinner. It is quite good, so now I have to figure out what else to serve it with!