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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i WOULD LIKE TO ASK A QUESTION REGARDING THE CUCUMBER PICKLE, WHEN THE RECIPE SAYS THE CUCUMBER WILL BE SLIMY, AFTER 4 DAYS, WHICH BEGS THE QUESTION DO YOU WASH THE SLIME OFF OR JUST WIPE IT OFF?
I’ve picked 3 large buckets of cooking apples yesterday from my tree, currently sat outside soaking to debug the apples!
I shall be off to get the rest of the ingredients I haven’t got for this recipe today.
My question is this, do I prepare the chutney and wait for jars to arrive from begging or borrowing, or wait until I think I have enough jars then prepare the chutney? How long will the apples last in a bucket compared to being made up into the chutney? Obviously I will not be using all the apples just for this chutney, before you think I’m apple chutney mad!
my partner and I have just made your apple chutney and so far it looks and tastes wonderful. We have never made a chutney before and wanted to use the apples off our trees. we found the recipe easy to follow-vital for us novices, and the ingredients are pretty much what you’d find in the cupboard. we forgot the all spice and put the weight in apples AFTER they were peeled and chopped, but we’re happy anyway!
thank you for a great website, we’ll be coming back to it again.
PS – I have almost 6 jars of chutney – and a husband with his tongue hanging out – most attractive!!
Almost finished making my first ever batch of chutney – smells divine!! I used a mix of sultanas, currants and chopped dates – (whatever was in the cupboard in other words!) I also used the food processor to chop the onion so it was very fine – my 6 yr old had great fun stirring it all whilst I chopped and added the apples – sure she will love to see it in the morning. Can’t wait to taste it – congratulations on a fab site – got you in my favourites now! (And will be begging more apples from the 3 sources I know have them!!)
Thanks! I made it and I have to say even I liked it, and I don’t normally like chutneys. Can imagine it will be even better when it’s matured… I used cider vinegar and swapped the sultanas for dried apricots as I can’t stand them. If I can get my hands on some more freebie apples I’m def making another batch!
Thank you so much for this recipe!
sab x
Hello Sabulous
The weight of the apples is before they are chopped.
Mincing is vital for the onion (there will be no obvious onion bits in the chutney) – I tried chopping them small once and they took hours and hours to soften.
Hi, I’m hoping to make this chutney as I have a bag full of windfalls…
I was just wondering: the weight of apples given in the recipe, is that befor or after they’re cored and chopped?
Also, if the onion is minced will there be noticable onion pieces in the finished chutney?
thanks!
Sab x
Hi Agnes, and thank you for your valuable observation. Often we do not see things ourselves that are very obvious to visitors.
I guess some people just copy and paste the bits they want from the web site into a Word document or something but I tried it myself just now and you are right. It wants to print the photograph and all 122 comments, which is not what you want (or most people I guess).
So I changed the setting for the Print feature, behind the scenes. Now it will just print the text of the article itself including the ingredients and method. No photograph and no comments. It takes one and a half pages. We cannot print just the recipe only. Specialist recipe sites can do that but we cannot.
Thanks for visiting and do please let us know how it turns out.
Danny
Your recipe for aple chutney looked good, so I tried to [print it off – but gave up as the printer was going to print off 17 pages! I don’t need that – been making jams and chutneys since I was knee high – learnt at my mother’s knee. Can you not devise a way to print off just the ingredients and Method? Other websites do this.