Makes about 2 pints
Ingredients
- 5 pounds apples, peeled, cored, and diced
- 1 3/4 cups apple cider
- 1 1/4 cups sugar
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- Pinch of salt
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon ground mace
- 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
Directions
- In a large pot, bring the apples and cider to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking or burning.
- Reduce the heat to low and simmer until the apples are soft, 30 to 35 minutes. Use a potato masher, fork, or immersion blender to roughly mash the mixture.
- Return the apple mixture to the heat, and stir in the sugar, lemon juice, salt, cinnamon, mace, and nutmeg.
- Continue to simmer until the mixture has thickened and becomes a deep rich brown, about 1 1/2 hours. The mixture will be relatively smooth, but may have a few chunks. If you want a completely smooth butter, you may purée it lightly at this point.
- Store the apple butter in a covered container in the refrigerator, or pour the finished apple butter into prepared jars, leaving 1/4 inch of headspace. Seal the jars and process for 7 to 10 minutes in a boiling-water canner. Store the processed jars in a cool, dark place.
5 pounds apples, peeled, cored, and diced (see note) – There is no “note”, What kind of apple/s should be used? Thanks!
Whoops! Thanks for catching that. Because the mixture is blended, the variety of apple doesn’t matter much at all, so choose the ones that you like best. Just like in apple pie, a mixture of sweet (Fiji, Honeycrisp, Golden Delicious) and tart (Granny Smith, Pink Lady) can be nice for balance, but apple butter is a great way to use up extra apples, so don’t feel limited by variety.
My mother-in-law’s Apple butter takes two days on low in the slow cooker, about 14 hours total. Same ingredients as above, the sugar is brown sugar and do NOT add the cider. It gets the deepest, darkest richest color, and is the most luscious texture after blending it. And the taste is pure condensed apple.