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.
Leave a reply
Hi Felicity
Good news! Thanks for leaving a comment.
oh problem solved! i upped the mix to full quantities of all and now it looks a total dream and is ready for potting :o)
thank you for such a lovely recipe
hi there
this is my first ever attempt at chutney and it is bubbling away on the stove just now! i have halved the recipe and am a little worried that there doesnt seem to be enough liquid? it already leaves ‘track marks’ after under an hour of cooking, should i add more vinegar?
thanks
Hi Daisy
Thanks very much for this update. Really useful!
Hello, just an update on using Malt Vinegar; tried a jar today after letting it mature for 2 months or so, and it was very tasty! There doesn’t seem to be any problems with using the ‘wrong’ one. I shall be giving lots for Christmas, but also keeping some for ourselves.
Hi, I am a newcomer to this site and to making apple chutney. I have a large Bramley apple tree and this year it was very heavilly laden, I could not give them all away and finished up throwing about 250/300kilos away.Some one told me I could have made a chutney hence my comments.I will attempt to make it next year ,will let you know the outcome. Les
Hi there.Just to up date you on the slow cooker apple chutney. Really worked well although needed a little longer to thicken and I think I might cut down on the amount of vinegar as the slow cooker tends to keep the moisture in. Tastes divine. My husband thinks it is the best thing since slice bread. I was going to give some as presents but he says that would be a waste!!
Hi, just finished a batch of the chutney. It took 8 hours for me 🙁
I think I stuck too literally to the description “bubbles barely breaking the surface” so i turned the heat up a little after 4 hours. It was near 8 hours before I could see a “definite track mark”
It looked great when finished. It seems to have thickened up a lot more, as the stuff that was in my leftover jar seems almost like a jelly as opposed to a chutney. Did I cook it too long?
By the way it tastes gorgeous and my wife who does not like vinegar / chutneys was munching away with some good cheddar so I cant wait to let it mature a little. I also tried your Potato & cabbage dish from last year and it was YUM!
I made this wonderful apple chutney recipe a few weeks ago, with a friend’s apples (she has a wonderful, heavily laden cooking apple tree and is generous enough to give me lots) and although I didn’t wait until a month had passed to taste it, it is absolutely delicious already! I doubled the mixture, replaced some of the apples with some chopped dates and dried apricots that I had in my cupboard (which were getting close to their sell-by date!). It took around 9 hours to thicken up – perhaps because I doubled the mixture – but as I started early it wasn’t a problem. Have made a few of your recipes now, all brilliant results, so thank you!
Wow, thanks for the super fast reply! I haven’t used any salt in the recipe, might add a bit to see what happens. Feel reassured that a lot of recipes use malt vinegar, as Im not going to be giving it away for another 2 months yet, hopefully it would be ok.
Many thanks x