Cottage Smallholder Plum Chutney or Damson Chutney
Posted by Fiona Nevile in Chutney and Pickles, Jam Jelly and Preserves | 222 comments
a wicker basket full of wild plums
This chutney recipe works well with plums, wild plums or damsons. It does not need months to mature and keeps well
I had some spare time today so finally retrieved the stock pot from Danny, swooshed it out with bicarbonate of soda to get rid of the taint of clove chutney (see Tricks and Tips below) and found the plum chutney recipe from Anne Mary’s old cook book. This was going to be the base of our own Cottage Smallholder Chutney.
I had collected three pounds of windfall wild plums yesterday and simmered them last night for 20 minutes in 75 ml of white wine vinegar. This is Delia’s canny trick to avoid stoning fresh plums for chutney (use some of the vinegar that you are going to use for your brew). This morning, grabbing a handful at a time, it was easy to find the stones and remove them (our wild plum stones are tiny, barely a centimetre long).
At breakfast we studied Anne Mary’s recipe and decided how we would change it to create a plum chutney that we would be proud of. Danny had to go to London so pinpointed his essential ingredients for our chutney – balsamic vinegar and juniper berries. As I was the one who ruined the last “Let’s make our own” batch with too many cloves, I decided that our chutney was definitely going to work this time.
There was a clove shaped crisis of confidence. And consequently the alterations that I made today were incrementally smalll. This meant hours of tasting, comparisons and retasting, until I felt quite queasy from ingesting so much chutney. (At least a jar without lunch). It has now simmered (tiny bubbles barely breaking the surface) for five hours. When you draw a wooden spoon through the chutney, it is thick enough to see where you have been. It is finally done, and approved for release. We have made a great plum chutney, extra fruity and piquant.
Danny returned exhausted from London and sniffed the aroma as he walked into the kitchen. There was a long silence as he grabbed a spoon and rushed to the stock pot for a taste. His response was positive. Our recipe is below..
Our latest Plum and Tamarind Chutney recipe is here.
Tricks and Tips:
- How do I get rid of tainted smells in pots?
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 hot water. Rub the solution over all surfaces and leave for two minutes. Rinse well in cold water.
- How do I sterilise jars and lids?
The sterilising method that we use is simple. Just before making the jam, I quickly wash and rinse the jars and place them upside down in a cold oven. Set the temperature to 160c/140c for 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 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.
| Cottage Smallholder Plum Chutney or Damson Chutney |
- 3lbs/1350g wild plums/damsons/eating plums
- 1lb/450g of apples (cored but not skinned). Chopped fine. Cooking apples are best but eating apples would do at a pinch.
- 1 lb/450g onions chopped fine
- 10.5 ozs/300g dried apricots (chopped at least into eight)
- 7 ozs/200g dried raisins (chopped into four)
- Half lb-1lb/225g-450g of soft brown sugar, depending on how sweet your wild plums/damsons/eating plums are. We’d usehalf a lb of sugar for eating plums but used 1lb for this batch as we were using wild plums (these are very tart like damsons).
- 2 large cloves of garlic chopped fine
- Half tsp of cayenne pepper
- 2 tsp of salt
- 1 tsp of allspice powder
- 1 tsp cinnamon powder
- 1 tsp ground ginger
- 1and a half pints/750 ml of white wine vinegar
- 1 small hot chilli
- 2 tsp of balsamic vinegar
- 5 juniper berries
- 10 black peppercorns
- Stone the plums and if big enough cut into slices.
- Chop the apples, onions, raisins and apricots.
- Place all ingredients in a large heavy bottomed saucepan and bring slowly to a gentle boil. Turn the heat down immediately and simmer very gently (tiny bubbles just breaking the surface on the lowest heat) for at least five hours until the mixture has broken down and thickens.
- Stir from time to time and more towards the end. If your simmering point is higher than ours, your chutney will be ready sooner. Take a peek every half hour or so. The chutney will thicken as it cools.
- When ready pour into sterilised jars and cover with plastic lined metal lids (how do I sterilise jars and lids? See Tips and Tricks above).
Leave a reply
Hi Ingrid
I’d love to hear how you get on!
I grow plums as well as other stone fruit at our country farm in the hunter valley andhave been making plum jam and plum chutney as well as apricot and peach chutney for ten years. I liked you plum chutney recipe and will try it out tomorrow morning. I’ll let you know how it went.
Hi Sara,
I tried to make a chutney that wouldn’t need months to mature. We started to eat ours immediately but it probably needs a month for the flavours to really develop.
I’ll be making ours again in a few weeks time (I froze some wild plums). It will be interesting to compare fresh with the year old vintage.
Hi Fiona,
I made your damson chutney at the weekend and it smelt and looked delicious. How long would you recommend leaving it before it can be used, as sometimes chutney needs to mature?
Thanks for sharing this fabulous recipe. Sara from farmingfriends
Hi Sara,
I’m really pleased that you tried this recipe. I bet that it tastes great with damsons. I’ve only made it with tart, wild plums.
Hi Maurice,
Great to hear that you will try our plum chutney.
The plum gumbo is in the pipe line.
I will try the above chutney recipe, but also I would be very interested to have a recipe for damson gumbo.
Hi James,
I wouldn’t use the currants. The sultans may work. Nice fat raisins work so well that it might be worth waiting and getting some for the chutney. You could start it off, the plum removal stage, if the plums are really ripe.
Hi Kate,
Interesting to hear that the currants didn’t really work.
Plum gumbo sounds intriguing. Would you like to do a guest spot? All recipes are original on this site but I am sure that you gave the gumbo your own special twist. If you’d like to do the spot email me through the contact us page.
I did some plum chutney last year using up some currants that were discovered in the cupboard-it was ok, but I thought the currants made it a bit less like chutney and more like a strange jam!Has anyone heard of plum gumbo- it is a preserve made mainly from plums with sliced oranges in it, it is wonderful in winter in pies and crumbles, I’ll dig the recipe out if anyone is interested- it seems to be a good year for plums.
Just wondering if it would worl by replacing the raisins with half currents and half sultanans, as I wne t and bought them today thinking thats what was in the recipe ?
Thanks in advance.