Spiced Apple Butter Recipe

Admittedly not the biggest tweaks I've ever made to a recipe, but here it is. In this year's food preservation I found myself going back to last year's canning posts for recipes and links and I'll keep this running tally going.

I had rounded up quite a few apple butter recipes when I invented my Chai Apple Butter Reciped last year. I wanted one that used apple cider vinegar for the extra tang; some recipes don't include that, or don't use much. For this batch I started with The Pioneer Woman's apple butter recipe. 

Since I was simultaneously working on two other recipes I used the slow-cooker method that Food in Jars uses for her Salted Caramel Pear Butter (made a batch of that two days ago). My slow cooker has a steam vent hole in the lid. For the first stage of cooking in this recipe I block that with a chopstick to keep the moisture in and cook the flavor into the flesh of the apples. That comes out for the later stage when I need the liquid to cook off.

The Pioneer Woman calls for adding a cup of water. I substituted apple cider. Why not make it even more appley when you have the chance?

Earlier this year I processed a lot of gleaned apples with my corer/slicer and had both skin-on and peeled in the freezer. For this recipe I used the ones with the skins, for the extra pectin and flavor. This saves the peeled ones for a future apple pie or other dessert use. Go with what you have and what you prefer. You can run the cooked mash through a food mill if you started with unpeeled apples and don't want the extra fiber.

Of course, per the title here, I oomphed up the spice. She called for 1 teaspoon of apple pie spice or pumpkin pie spice for three pounds of apples. I drew some inspiration from British Mixed Spice, discovered along the way in my never-again-will-I-make-ketchup research. I wanted it to be cinnamon-forward. This might sound like a lot of seasonings but it didn't taste overly spiced with that dusty quality I've created at times with over-enthusiastic perusal of the spice drawer.

I needed to deal with the aftermath of the Great Freezer Defrost of 2025, so my quantities are larger than my starting-point recipe: 4 pounds of apples. More than this quantity of pears had worked just fine in the slow cooker. You can scale this back to the quantities in The Pioneer Woman's recipe.

Ingredients

4 lbs. apples, chopped. These can be frozen or canned, skins on or off according to your preference

1 c. apple cider vinegar

1-1/2 c. apple cider or apple juice

3/4 t. salt

1-2/3 c. brown sugar

2 t. vanilla paste or vanilla extract, if you have it on hand

2 t. flaky sea salt or kosher salt

1 t. cinnamon

1/2 t. black pepper

1/4 t. nutmeg

1/4 t. mace (optional; for me this is the essence of pumpkin pie spice)

1/4 t. cardamom

1/8 t. cloves

Directions

Place apples, vinegar, cider/juice and salt in slow cooker and stir to combine. Turn it to high. Cook for 60-90 minutes, stirring occasionally. You want the fruit to be soft enough to be blendable.

Blend with an immersion stick blender if you have one. Or remove a couple of cups at a time, blend in a blender or food processor, then return all the blended sauce to the slow cooker. Be careful when blending hot semi-liquid foods. Don't fill the container at or above the halfway mark, keep a towel over the top, adjust the lid so you're letting steam escape rather than build up. All of this is why I prefer my immersion blender.

Mix the dried spices together, then add the brown sugar, vanilla and spices to the pot. Prop the lid slightly ajar so steam can escape, maybe with your spatula or a chopstick laid crosswise so the lid can rest on it on one end. 

Cook on high, stirring often, until it's the color and consistency you want. If you want to be thick and spreadable this will take a while, 2-3 hours. If you stop much sooner, congratulations! You have made a spiced applesauce. 

Stirring often means every 15 minutes or so. Food in Jars says to stir every 30 minutes but if I waited that long I'd have apple butter stuck on the bottom of the pot. You can let it go a bit longer early on when the pot has plenty of liquid in it. The more it cooks down and thickens, the more you need to be sure to scrape the bottom thoroughly. 

How hot your slow cooker gets will be a factor only you can judge, and that will affect your stirring frequency and total cook time. Food in Jars blogger Marisa notes that the older Crock-Pot had a gentler low temperature than newer ones. That's my experience with my newer model; I really can't go off and leave it.

Prep your jars for canning according to the safe canning practices from the National Center on Home Food Preservation. Process 15 minutes at full boil.

My yield: 4 half-pints, 3 quarter-pints, 1 6-oz. jar in a reuse experiment from a commercial product (nice straight-sidded jar)

Canning posts usually show something like this as the triumphant closing shot, or maybe a close-up of the delectable contents. 

In reality the closing scene is more like this. 

I should have taken a picture even earlier I was making full use of every flat surface in the kitchen and had three recipes going at once. Maybe next time.

Related reading and recipes

• In Which I Say Never Again to Making Ketchup
• When Life Hands You a Defrosted Freezer, Make Jam
• My Circular Economy of Apples
• Making Taybarb: Tayberry Rhubarb Jam Recipe
• Canstravaganza! Food Preservation 2024
• Blackberry Apple Chutney Recipe
• Green Tomatoes. So Many Green Tomatoes.
• Apples, Apples, Apples!
• Zucchini Tomato Salsa (Everyone Needs Salsa, or, What to Do with a Really Giant Zucchini)
• Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes!
• Pears, Pears, Pears!
• Future Marmalade
• All my posts on food, gardening, and the environment

Green Tomato Chutney Not-a-Ketchup Sauce

I may have noted recently that I don't think green tomato ketchup is worth the effort.

Also noted: Large quantity (~6 pounds) of green tomatoes plus chopped onions plus canned apples, all prepped and in the fridge under the assumption that I'd be making another ketchup recipe.

Third note to file: Lots of green tomato chutney and green tomato/tomatillo chutney already on hand in all their chunky goodness from last year and earlier this year.

Hence the thought experiment: What if I followed a chutney recipe but then blended it to make it smooth like ketchup? I should have some pretty screamin' awesome sweet/tangy sauce that would be great with fries, tofu, on oven-baked yams, maybe over rice, with cheese on crackers if it wasn't too runny to sit there, blend with yogurt to make an interesting dip. Many possible uses! Although not a ketchup! (And yes, blended green chutney sauce looks quite a lot like split pea soup.)

I give quantities as if you had diced or chopped things. I heartily endorse throwing ingredients for this into the food processor and whirling them up to save time. You're going to be pureeing and smooshing to get the lumps out anyway.

This makes a big batch! I'd already committed myself with the earlier prep. This could be cut in half with proportionate adjustments to everything. Cook time will vary depending on how juicy your tomatoes are.

Inspirations

• Green Tomato Ketchup recipe by From the Larder
• My own Green Tomato Apple Chutney Recipe, developed last year
• Creative Canning Green Tomato Ketchup, which was the winner of the two recipes I tried last weekend

Wet ingredients

• Green tomatoes: ~6-8 cups, yield from ~6 pounds
• Yellow or white onion: 1-1/2 cups, diced
• Apple: 2 cups, diced, canned, or even applesauce if that's what you have
• Green bell pepper (or another sweet bell pepper color if that's what you have): 1 whole pepper, diced
• Dried fruit: 1 cup of whatever turns your cranks. I like a combination of dates and dried cranberries
• Vinegar: 1 cup. Malt or apple cider vinegar preferred; white vinegar will be sharper; red or white wine vinegar is fine. Just needs to be labeled 5% acidity.
• Brown sugar: 1-1/2 cups. OK to substitute white sugar if that's what you have
• Green or red chilis, optional: 1-2, diced, if you want to add some fresh chili heat. Substitute 1-2 t. crushed red pepper, tasting and adjusting for your heat preference as the recipe cooks down
• 1 T. fresh grated ginger, or ginger paste from a tube (so handy!)
• 4-5 garlic cloves, crushed, or 1 T. garlic paste from a tube
• Optional: 1-1/2 T. vegan Worcestershire sauce, if available. Regular is fine if you don't have vegan, but then you should label this for any gift recipients who might prefer vegan
• Optional if you want a thinner sauce: 1/2 c. sherry, cooking sherry, or something you routinely substitute for these (apple cider or apple juice could work here)

Dry ingredients/Seasonings
Stir the dry spices together in a small bowl, then add to the wet ingredients. Yes, yes, you can absolutely dump the measurements straight into the sauce without mixing them first, but combining them first gives you a better distribution in the liquid than if you end up with a surprise clump of ground ginger.

• 1 T. fennel seeds, whirled in a coffee grinder or pounded with a mortar and pestle
• 1 T. ground mustard
• 1 T. salt
• 2 t. ground cardamom
• 2 t. ground black pepper
• 1 t. smoked paprika
• 1 t. cinnamon
• 1 t. ground cardamom
• 1 t. ground ginger (or increase fresh ginger above)
• 1/8 t. nutmeg
• 1/8 t. cloves

Put all ingredients except for the optional sherry or apple juice in one big stockpot (takes longer) or divide across two pans, preferably wide saucepans or Dutch ovens with plenty of surface for evaporation of the liquids.

Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a rapid simmer/low boil, and cook, stirring often, for around 60-90 minutes. Tomatoes spit when they boil so wear mitts, pay attention. Don't cover the pans; the goal here is some evaporation. Frequent stirring is essential to prevent some of the sauce burning to the bottom of the pan. Ask me how I know.

At 60-90 minutes the vegetables may not be entirely soft yet. Taste the seasonings and oomph up flavor notes you'd like to have a bit more of. Go carefully here, maybe 1/4 t. or 1/2 t. at a time if it's something that could nd up overpowering.

Continue to cook until everything is soft enough to blend. I tried my immersion blender first, then went to the regular blender. Be careful blending hot liquids. Put in less than half the container's capacity, have the lid cracked open a tiny bit to let steam out, start on a low pulse and step it up as the contents puree and liquify.

Return to the kettle and cook a bit longer to reach the consistency you want. This is ready to can now, though. 

If it's thicker than you want and you'd like a more pourable sauce, add 1/2 cup of sherry (idea borrowed from the Creative Canning recipe linked above), apple juice or apple cider, and cook another 5 minutes or so.

Follow safe canning practices from the National Center on Home Food Preservation. Process 15 minutes at full boil.

Yield will vary depending on how juicy your tomatoes are. My yield: 8 half-pints, 11 quarter-pints.

Related reading and recipes

• In Which I Say Never Again to Making Ketchup
• When Life Hands You a Defrosted Freezer, Make Jam
• My Circular Economy of Apples
• Making Taybarb: Tayberry Rhubarb Jam Recipe
• Canstravaganza! Food Preservation 2024
• Blackberry Apple Chutney Recipe
• Green Tomatoes. So Many Green Tomatoes.
• Apples, Apples, Apples!
• Zucchini Tomato Salsa (Everyone Needs Salsa, or, What to Do with a Really Giant Zucchini)
• Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes!
• Pears, Pears, Pears!
• Future Marmalade
• All my posts on food, gardening, and the environment

In Which I Say Never Again to Making Ketchup

I knew this. I knew this. I'd made a batch of homemade tomato ketchup years and years ago in Spokane and learned just how very, very long it takes to cook down. (Why specify "tomato" ketchup? Because, as I learned from The Joy of Cooking, whether you call it ketchup or catsup it's any savory smooth vegetable sauce. Mushroom Ketchup? It's a thing.)

But oops, I did it again. Had a lot of green tomatoes and remembered last year's idea of making green tomato ketchup. I'd even rounded up the recipes. And I still have plenty of my beloved green tomato chutney on hand, supplemented by some green tomato/tomatillo chutney that's a bit sharper, but still good. 

Last year I tried making the dehydrated seasoned green tomatoes linked in that same post. Blech. And we'd been saying we'd like to have ketchup on hand without ever actually getting around to buying any. I can fix this!

Sunday I headed out to the yard to pick the many, many green tomatoes left and do a bit of cleanup of the raised beds. Since I started my seed snail 'speriment a bit late, the Mortgage Lifter heirloom tomatoes hadn't had enough time to ripen. They're huge and beautiful and I'll be starting those seeds earlier in 2026 so I get the payoff in ripe red tomatoes.

So, yeah, around 24 pounds or so of green tomatoes.

Brilliant idea: Make batches of three different recipes in a head to head taste contest, then use the last batch of tomatoes to double down on the winner.

Dear Reader, this is not how I'll ever spend another Sunday.

I got through two of the three recipes. Neither of them makes my heart beat faster. One was the winner with Sweet Hubs. Fortunately, that was the batch that had more tomatoes based on the recipe's proportions. I added more sugar to both recipes. Neither of them is a giftable product, which is my yardstick for success.

And the labor! So many steps. So many. The two recipes used two different approaches, too.

Mamta's Kitchen Green Tomato Ketchup: Cook the tomatoes, onions and garlic until soft, which didn't take nearly as long as the four-hour Creative Canning recipe. Put through a food mill, then through a sieve to get the smooth sauce consistency, then cook with spices, vinegar and sugar. This batch had a smaller quantity of tomatoes. I doubled it to 2 kg and was able to fit into my deep saucepan. I normally wouldn't double an untried recipe but I had so, so many green tomatoes and the spice mix sounded really good. Garam masala, mustard, and more.

The recipe indicated that 1 kg of tomatoes would produce around 2 liters of sauce before adding spices etc. My tomatoes must have been super juicy, as I started with 2 kg and ended up with not quite that 2-liter mark. I seasoned based on volume produced, not volume I started with. I added more spices after tasting; mine are getting old, I know.

Yield from all of that: 2 half-pints, 1 quarter-pint.

Creative Canning Green Tomato Ketchup: Cook everything everywhere all at once for a long, long time (four hours), stirring frequently so it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan. This started with 6 pounds of tomatoes so I used my Dutch oven. I'd already done the food mill + sieve steps for the Mamta recipe. This one called for pureeing ingredients in a blender, then putting it through a sieve. Much easier than the (manual) food mill process. I'd started with more tomatoes so it isn't a completely parallel comparison but I know I threw a lot more tomato skins/seeds/solids into the compost with Mamta's recipe than with this one.

This one was sweetened with honey. I added another cup of sugar after tasting (one-half cup at a time). It came out the flavor winner and was a much brighter green color.

Yield: 6 half-pints.

If I were making either of these again, which I will not be doing, I'd use the blender + sieve technique from Creative Canning. I might use the cooking approach from Mamta's because it was so much faster, but then again that might be a function of the tomato quantity. 

I couldn't tell you whether having the seasonings in from the beginning can be credited with the better flavor of the Creative Canning approach. I'd actually think it would be the opposite because seasonings added too early can disappear a bit. Mamta's recipe made the point that sugar and salt both darken the end result, hence adding them in at the end, but the spice profile with several brown spices and blends meant hers was the darker brown sauce anyway.

Another lesson learned: I had purchased cute little 8-ounce stout bottles from Fillmore Container, planning to bottle whatever sauces I might make this year as a change of pace from chutney. But the ketchup was thick enough that it wouldn't pour easily out of the bottle and I realized it would be far easier to can it in my standard jars. I'll use those bottles for something runnier. 

In a side note, I couldn't find instructions for headspace with that smaller mouth, which worries me. Need enough air to suck out for the vacuum, not something that creates so much pressure the bottle gives way in the kettle. The functional headspace with a much smaller circumference is obviously less so I think I need to do the geometry calculation to figure out how much headspace yields the equivalent air volume of a 1/4" headspace on a regular mouth jar. I'll keep poking around to find that or do the math before I try making some other sauce.

I did the prep for the third batch while the others were cooking down. I'd always known it would have to wait, given the amount of time it takes ketchup to cook down. So I whirled the tomatoes and onions in the food processor and stuck them in the fridge.

Know what I'm going to make with them instead of the third ketchup recipe?

Chutney.

Related reading and recipes

• Green Tomato Chutney Not-a-Ketchup Sauce
• When Life Hands You a Defrosted Freezer, Make Jam
• My Circular Economy of Apples
• Making Taybarb: Tayberry Rhubarb Jam Recipe
• Canstravaganza! Food Preservation 2024
• Blackberry Apple Chutney Recipe
• Green Tomatoes. So Many Green Tomatoes.
• Apples, Apples, Apples!
• Zucchini Tomato Salsa (Everyone Needs Salsa, or, What to Do with a Really Giant Zucchini)
• Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes!
• Pears, Pears, Pears!
• Future Marmalade
• All my posts on food, gardening, and the environment

When Life Hands You a Defrosted Freezer, Make Jam

I spent much of last September in a canning frenzy. This September wasn't. I went on a two-week vacation starting Sept. 27 and needed to get things done to be ready for heading out of the country to England.

October? Also not a canning month. That two-week vacation went into mid-October, then we had a family weekend trip (which involved giving away jars of tasty treats), then I had a business trip.

Oct. 31, however, brought me a nasty surprise that meant November would start with a lot of canning. Went out to the freezer and discovered the door was open a tiny, tiny bit. Just wide enough for long enough to have defrosted every last thing, including all that produce I'd prepped and frozen earlier in the year. My visions of cozy winter weekends making a batch of this and a batch of that when the mood struck turned into a salvage situation with the clock ticking.

I made some fast decisions about how much I could get through in a weekend and put those thawed bags into the refrigerator. I figured since the apples and pears were mostly destined for apple-pear butter they could stand the freeze/thaw/freeze cycle a bit better than berries and tomatoes, so they stayed in the freezer to go back into their cold slumbers.

Saturday production:

Blackberry Jelly 15 quarter-pints, 6 half-pints. This no-pectin recipe jelled like a dream. I usually make jams but I had two big bags of blackberries and I still have seedless blackberry jam from last year, or was it the year before? The pulp and seeds will go into fruit leather with some plums a neighbor gave me.

Tayberry Jam: 16 quarter-pints, 8 half-pints. Pruning those bushes really paid off in production! The tried and true Chef Heidi Fink recipe I used last year. My experience has been that it takes much longer to get to the jammy stage than her recipe suggests. I use two tests: Does it run together in a sheeting action when I dip some up in a spoon, and does it hold together and slide down a plate from the freezer without a lot of juice separating out when I tilt the plate? I picked the latter tip up from a recipe somewhere and really like it, as it doesn't involve burning my finger in the jam.

Sour Cherry Amaretto Jam: 5 quarter-pints, 2 half-pints. The cherries are courtesy of a Buy Nothing you-pick offer. I didn't get a lot, around 3.25 pounds. I used the no-pectin sour cherry jam recipe from Sourdough Brandon, enhanced by the amaretto suggestion in the recipe from DishNTheKitchen. Honestly, a tiny bit disappointed on this one. The sour tasted more of the lemon juice than the cherries to my tastebuds.

"Razzbuzzy" Jam: 7 quarter-pints. Going with the "let's add liqueur to jam" theme, I made the Classic Raspberry Jam recipe from Creative Canning. I only had about 2.5 cups of raspberries. I used a 1:1 fruit:sugar ratio per the recipe and added 3 T. raspberry liqueuer. Not all the alcohol cooks out, or so I've read, but this isn't really enough for a buzz. It's just a fun word.

Spiced Blueberry Jam: 7 quarter-pints. Another tiny batch. I had just about 1.5 pounds, perfect for one of the Food in Jars small-batch recipes.

I'll cover Sunday production and beyond in another post. 

Related reading and recipes

• In Which I Say Never Again to Making Ketchup
• My Circular Economy of Apples
• Making Taybarb: Tayberry Rhubarb Jam Recipe
• Canstravaganza! Food Preservation 2024
• Blackberry Apple Chutney Recipe
• Green Tomatoes. So Many Green Tomatoes.
• Apples, Apples, Apples!
• Zucchini Tomato Salsa (Everyone Needs Salsa, or, What to Do with a Really Giant Zucchini)
• Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes!
• Pears, Pears, Pears!
• Future Marmalade
• All my posts on food, gardening, and the environment