Crock Pot Apple Butter
Mmmm apple butter. Sweet, spicy and fruity spread over a slice of homemade bread, does it get much better than that?
One thing I wanted to be sure to do with all the apples we picked this year was to make apple butter. I've only made it a few times, and it has been awhile. So, I decided to check out a few recipes.
What I found was about as many techniques and ingredient combinations as there are people who make apple butter. In all cases apple butter is apples cooked for a long time with sugar and spice added. Besides that, it is very much a what works for you and spice to taste kind of preserve.
It can be cooked on the stove, in the oven or in the crock pot. A wide variety of fall type spices can be used, and some recipes even call for cinnamon red hot candy. A common theme regarding spices is to use extracts and oils instead of ground spices. One recipe used a spice bag filled with various spice placed in with the apples while they cooked.
So basically, cook the apples a lot, and add sugar and spice to taste. If you choose to use extracts add a little at a time. They can be very powerful. Below is rough estimate of how I made it. (Yield approx. 6 pints)
Crock pot of peeled, cored and sliced apples
1 C water
4 C sugar
3 drops clove oil
1 TB cinnamon extract.
Put water and apples in the crock pot. Cook on high until apples start to get soft or it comes to a boil, then turn to low. Stir occasionally. After the apples are soft, add sugar one cup at a time, cooking about an hour between. Taste before adding more sugar.
The apples have cooked long enough when a wooden spoon stands up in the crock pot of cooked apples. Add spices to taste. Fill hot jars with hot apple butter and seal. Jars can be sealed, as recommended by the experts, by processing for 10 minutes in a boiling water bath. I tried something new with this batch, the inversion method.
To seal jars with the inversion method turn the filled jars upside down for 15 minutes. Then turn right side up and allow to cool. This is the first time I've used this method and all the jars sealed. I'm sold. I believe this method can be used for any jam or jelly type recipe. I will be using it again.
(Please note that the boiling water method is the recommendation of the canning experts at the USDA.)
Labels:
canning and preserving
21 comments:
I haven't made apple butter since I was in 5th grade. I still love it, though and I can't wait till my trees are producing. Thanks for the tips!
We have an orchard with about 7 apple trees, so we make a lot of apple sauce and butter. Last year, I hit upon the most efficient way yet to make them. I fill the crock pot with cut up apples and let them cook half the day. Then I run the apples through the food mill to take out the seeds and peels. I can heat it up and can it that way, or put it back into the crock pot, add spices, let it cook overnight, and in the morning I have apple butter. We've never added any sugar to either product and both taste grand! Malena
So, how many jars did you get from one crockpot? And how many apples did it take to fill the crockpot?
Heather,
There are lots of great pick your own places your way if you just can't wait! :)
Malena,
Great idea. Thanks.
We didn't add sugar to the sauce, but I thought the apple butter needed it. I'm not sure what variety we have, but they are pretty tart.
Mary,
6 pints of apple butter. That would change some though depending on how much sugar you use.
How many apples? Well that would have been a good thing to keep track of. I'm guessing two dozen medium sized apples.
Hi Stephanie,
I use the inversion method, too. It's so much easier than a water bath. Keeps your kitchen cooler, too.
So far I've never had a jar fail to seal.
I found two boxes of paraffin at yard sales (75 cents total; the pan to melt them in came from a "free" box) so I may try using that on some of the next batch of jam. My grandmother did it that way. The USDA wishes that I wouldn't. Then again, the USDA tells me not to use the inversion method, either.
I'd only use paraffin on jams I plan to keep. The ones that I make for gifts would still get regular lids.
Another new thing for me this year is not using commercial pectin. It set up beautifully. I'm sold.
I've made blackberry jam (and frozen a bunch of berries) because the berries grow everywhere in Seattle. A neighbor is giving me plums so I'll be plum jam, too.
To all who've never tried jam-making: It's really simple, and really addictive. Try it!
Donna,
I was just reading about not using pecting. Did you use apples or just have a soft set?
I made blackberry and plum jam without pectin or crabapples -- just fruit and sugar (and, with the plums, a little water). The blackberry set up pretty firmly. The recipe said to bring it to 220 degrees but it would only go up to about 215. My fallback was to try the "cold plate test," i.e. put a small spoon of the jam on a cold plate and put it in the freezer for about 4 minutes; if it starts to gel, it's ready. To be on the safe side, I brought the mixture back up to a hard boil and then put it in jars. (And inverted them!)
The plum is more of a soft set, but that may have been because I undercut the cooking time a bit. The recipe I found on the Internet said to bring it slowly to a boil and then boil it hard until it was "near or at the gel point," or about 20 minutes. I took it off the heat at 15 minutes and tried the cold plate test, and *thought* it looked ready. The next batch I will cook the full 20 minutes. If it's still a soft set, well, that's OK too because it tastes good either way. I'm also going to try a different plum jam recipe, which uses a little lemon juice and more water than the first recipe. Since the fruit is free and I bought the sugar on sale, it's a cheap experiment.
Now I have a question for you: Did you blend the apples before you jarred them? If not, is the apple butter rough-textured? Some recipes I found on the Internet suggested using a hand blender to make it smooth, and others suggested starting with applesauce in the crock pot and letting it cook down overnight into apple butter. That would be smoother, probably, but it adds another layer of work.
What did you do, and how did it come out? I just got a source for apples (thanks, Freecycle!) and would like to do both applesauce and apple butter if I get enough fruit.
Thanks for sharing this info.
Thanks Donna! something to consider for next year.
I did not blend the apple butter. You can see some small chunks of apple in the butter, but really you can't feel them when you eat it. Those apples are so cooked and soft even the little chunks are mush.
Just a note-when I've made crock pot apple butter in the past I found that it never really reduced down to that dark, thick butter that I wanted until I started leaving the crock pot top off. . . after all, if you are trying to reduce, then you need to let the moisture out!
Mary,
Making more apple butter today and counted them as I filled the crockpot; 27. My first guess was pretty close! :)
My crockpot lid broke last winter, but I haven't gotten around to getting a new one. Your post might be what it takes me to go buy one now!
GreenStyle Mom: I've seen crockpot lids -- just the lids -- at thrift stores. Honest. You might check your local store first. I'd also suggest posting on Freecycle, since some people buy appliances and never use them and then want to get rid of them.
Good luck!
Stephanie: I made apple butter and pear-plum jam over the weekend, and canned nine pints of pears. Funny how much more fruit there is in my jars compared to the Libby's cans...The pear-plum was supposed to be just pear jam, but I didn't have quite enough fruit so I chopped up some plums (I've got LOTS of those) and tossed them in to make up the four cups of fruit I needed. It turned a lovely rosy-pink color.
The fruit was gleaned from an ad on Freecycle and from a neighbor who doesn't eat plums. The blackberry jam I made a couple of weeks ago originated in a blackberry patch around the corner from my place.
And of course I did a Smart Spending blog essay on the experience. You can find it at http://blogs.moneycentral.msn.com/smartspending/archive/2008/09/08/putting-food-by-worth-the-time-or-not.aspx.
Thanks for the apple butter suggestion. My apartment still smells good enough to eat.
Greenstyle mom,
Funny, my lid broke this year, but just the handle. It still can be used but isn't very convenient!
You could just cover the lid with foil too. For this if some of the steam got out that would be fine as long as it got hot enough to cook the apples!
Donna,
You have been busy! Pear plum sounds wonderful!
Oh, I have to try that it sounds awesome. I was planning on apple picking next weekend, now I have even more motivation!
It really was fun. Of course, I don't have to feed a houseful -- just me and whomever I gift the jam to this Christmas. :-)
On the way back from my walk this evening I noticed that there are still blackberries out there. Even though it was getting dim, I went home and brought back some boxes. Before it got too dark to see I had three more half-pints. This winter they will make lovely shortcakes; they're also very nice tossed (frozen) into bread pudding just before I put it in the oven.
This afternoon I tried a new recipe, plum crisp instead of apple crisp. Very tasty. Now I'm thinking of freezing some of the plums because I sure can't make that much jam...!
I really wish I had a little house with a little yard with a southern exposure so I could grow food. Until I do, I'll just keep gleaning.
I LOVE apple butter...thanks for sharing this recipe. I'll be making this this year.
Want to know something, my Mom never processed any of her homemade jams. She would boil the jars and make sure the jam was hot and even without inverting them, they always sealed. Anyway, I process other stuff but my jams always have sealed that way too...
Thanks,
Heidi
Ladies, I never use the lid on my crock pot when making apple butter. I use a splatter screen instead. (got to let that steam out) or you could put a couple layers of paper towels under the lid to catch the drips. Just my
.02$
Hi. My name is Gina, and I teach canning classes at my local community college. Like the USDA, I would like to warn you and your readers about using the "open kettle method" of canning (putting hot product in hot, sterilized jars and letting them seal without further processing). The jars will usually always seal this way, of course, but that's besides the point. It's about heating the product in the jar hot enough to kill dangerous microorganisms like molds, yeasts, and bacteria, and to inactivate enzymes that change the color, flavor, and texture of the food that you can.
It's only ten minutes in a pot of boiling water. Isn't that a small price to pay in time and energy to keep you, your family, and your friends safe? That's how I see it anyway. Food for thought....
--Gina
P.S. Putting paraffin on jams and jellies is also unsafe. The wax does not make an airtight seal and those pesky organisms can grow in the tiny airholes that form between the bottom of the paraffin layer and the top of the preserves. Again, it's best to skip the wax and simply boil the jars in a water bath.
I like to use a combination of apples when I make sauce or butter. This year I went with Gold Rush, Granny Smith, Rome and Arkansas Black. We usually get apples that have a sweet/tart combination. I do not like the traditional applesauce apples like Summer Rambo and Transparent.
And I have to agree with the last comment about wax- my grandmother always used wax, and there was often mold underneath. My mother just scraped it off and fed it to us anyway. She also threw the used paraffin from the jars into a drawer to be sent back to my grandmother and re-melted. I swore there would be no paraffin on my stuff.
I just finished blogging about applebutter at http://yumminessnsues.blogspot.com
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