Apple Chutney recipe
Posted by Fiona Nevile in Chutney and Pickles | 252 comments
Our apples make great chutney
I’m not surprised that the fruit that tempted Eve was an apple. It is such a useful fruit. From sweet apple puree to flagons of frothy cider, the apple plays a major role in our lives.
It always troubles me when I see apples left unpicked on trees. We’ve had a great cooking apple harvest this year. Danny and I have spent the morning picking apples from the old trees in our tiny orchard. We are going to make cider this year and have a go at apple wine. So we left a great pile of them on the garden table to soften in the frosts.
If you do this it’s easier to extract the juice. The ones that we pick from the tree are wrapped in newspaper and stored in cardboard boxes in the shed. The mice do nibble a few but the majority keep through the winter until we need them.
The windfalls don’t keep. Even if they look good they are bruised when they hit the ground. We have loads of windfalls, so we decided to branch out and add apple chutney to our range. As with our plum chutney we wanted a fruit rather than a vegetable taste.
This delicate chutney is the result.
| Cottage Smallholder Apple Chutney recipe |
- 1.5 k of cooking apples
- 500g of onions
- 500g of sultanas
- 750g Demerara sugar
- 500ml of white wine vinegar
- Zest and juice of two lemons
- I small chilli
- 1 tsp ground ginger
- 1 tsp ground allspice
- ½ tsp of cinnamon
- Pinch of ground cloves
- ½ tsp of Maldon sea salt
- 8 peppercorns
- 1 tbsp of mustard seed
- Wash, peel, core and chop the apples fine
- Peel and chop and mince the onions (if you don’t have a mincer chop them very fine)
- Put all ingredients into a large heavy bottomed saucepan and bring slowly to the boil. Stirring until the sugar is dissolved.
- Then simmer very gently, bubbles barely breaking the surface, until the chutney has thickened, stiring every now and then.
- It is ready when drawing a spoon across the surface leaves a definite track mark. This will take at least four hours.
- Pot into warm sterilised jars with plastic lined lids (how do I sterilise jars and lids? See Tips and Tricks below).
- Don’t use cellophane lids as the vinegar will evaporate through these and your chutney will dry up.
- Label when cold and store in a cool, dry place.
- Leave to mature for a month. The longer that you leave it to mature the better it will be!
Tips and Tricks
<strong>How do I get rid of tainted smells in pots?</strong>
If your cooking pot or container is tainted with the smell of the last resident (curry, tomato sauce etc). Sprinkle with a good tablespoon of bicarbonate of soda into it and add a good splosh of boiling water. Rub the solution over all surfaces and leave for two minutes. Rinse well in cold water.
<strong>How do I sterilise jars and lids?</strong>
The sterilising method that we use is simple. When the chutney is cooked, I quickly wash and rinse the jars and place them upside down in a cold oven. Set the temperature to 160c (140c fan assisted). When the oven has reached the right temperature I turn off the heat. The jars will stay warm for quite a while. I only use plastic lined metal lids for preserves as the all-metal lids can go rusty. I boil these for five minutes in water to sterilise them. If I use Le Parfait jars, I do the same with the rubber rings.
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Hi Claire
Kate has given you a much better list of ideas than I would have done!
Hi Kate
Inspirational. My mouth was watering in the early hours of this morning.
Have it with cold meat… cauliflower cheese…grate cheese into a bowl, add some mayonnaise and chutney, stir. Spread generously on toast, put under the grill until the cheese is all melty and delicious…stand with your head in the larder so no-one sees you eating chutney straight from the jar with a spoon…slice a baked potato in half and scoop out the potato, mash it up with chutney and grated cheese and some mayo, put the mix back into the potato skins and cook until it is all melty inside and crispy on top…mix with some plain yogurt to make a dip to have with papadums…fresh bread, cheese and chutney sarnies…
Hello! My mother and I are currently making our first ever chutney using your recipe, it’s in the early stages of cooking but looking good so far! I was just wondering if you had any suggestions of what to do with the final product?
Thankyou,excellent ideas.In case you hadn’t guessed i’m new to chutney(and jam)making,so want to have a go at as many different ones as i can,and your site is just what i need.Thankyou again.
Well, you could try it, but the sultanas in the recipe are there for a reason:they add an extra sweetness to the mix and a depth of flavour that enhances the flavour of the apple, also they swell up as you cook the chutney mix absorbing some of the apple juice and vinegar,taking on the spice flavours, thus intensifying the flavour of the final chutney AND making it less runny!
Elderberries are very juicy and they also have a strong and very distinctive flavour of their own. In theory you can chutney anything, but I feel a good rule of thumb is that if you can’t find a recipe anywhere for a particular fruit/veg in a chutney it is with good reason,a s I’m sure cooks have tried just about everything over the years!
Elderberries make wonderful jelly, they need quite a bit of lemon juice with them to make it set and the resulting jelly is wonderful stirred into beef cassaroles or with meat, so perhaps make a piquant jelly with your berries- try adding plenty of lemon and perhaps some rind too and maybe a little good vinegar- or some orange rind…adapt a redcurrant jelly recipe like the one Jane Grigson gives in her book “good things” which has vinegar and cinnamon in it and is just gorgeous.
Sorry, i meant instead of sultanas.
Lin- elderberries alone? Er, no, I wouldn’t. Firstly there is a lot of skin to pulp, which is why they are usually jellied, secondly the flavour of elderberry is very strong, thirdly they are very juicy, so you would end up cooking the chutney for ages and it would be just skins you’d be left with-Apples are pulpy and big and fibrous so they work as a chutney base, elderberries are just bags of juice. Be good for adding a flavour though.
Whilst reading through everyones suggestions as to what could be substituted,changed or added to this recipe,i wondered if elderberries could be used.
Great site,love the recipes.
If your mangoes were very ripe it they will have been quite juicy so it won’t thicken as readily as chutney made with less ripe fruit. Mango chutney tends to be runny, just tip it out of the jars and give it a long, gentle,slow boil without a lid on the pan ( use a wide pan for faster evaporation) until it is thicker- remember, chutney does thicken as it matures.
Can you tell me why my mango chutney did not set. Should I boil it up again or add more sugar?