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Trash Panda Likes Them Apples: Making Apple Butter

It is fall in Seattle and the apples are coming ripe. Soooo many apples. Pressing cider is kind of a pain in the ass, and so is baking pie, so what the fuck are you supposed to do with all these apples? I don’t know about you, but I make apple butter.

Fruit butters are fruits cooked down into a spreadable paste and maybe spices and sweetened. With apples it’s as if you cooked down applesauce some more. More fiber-y tree fruits like plums, apricots and pears also work for fruit butter.

The raccoon Molly eating apples fresh from the tree - 07/10/07 - photo by Gaby Muller.

Trash Panda’s Real Easy Apple Butter

INGREDIENTS:

  • Apples, water (or maybe Apple Cider or Apple Cider Vinegar) 
  • Optional: Tasty apples spices like cinnamon or nutmeg, sweetener of choice

TOOLS: 

  • Knife and cutting board, slow cooker or just a big pot
  • Optional but real useful: something to blend everything up at the end (i.e. immersion blender) or something to sieve out the bits you don't want in there (i.e. food mill)

STEPS:

  • Core and cut up a bunch of apples, enough to fill up your pot or slow cooker most of the way. Remove any rot or bad bug damage, but you can leave in imperfections and bruised bits
    • If you've got a blender or food mill of some kind, don't worry about peeling the apples. 
    • If you don't, you best peel the apples. The peels don't cook down, and you end up with these poky rolls of peel that are distributed throughout the butter like little land mines for your mouth
  • Chuck the apple chunks into your pot/ slow cooker, along with a cup or two of water or other delicious liquid
  • Let is cook for awhile. To really let it cook down, I'd say let it bubble for 4-6 hrs, 8-10 if you're feeling feisty
    • Set your slow cooker to high to start if you're able to keep an eye on it, and turn it down to low once it's gotten nice and hot and started to bubble a bit. I've left it to cook overnight lots of times and felt pretty comfortable with it, as long as it's set to low and there's a good amount of liquid to start
    • Set your stove on low and keep the apples simmering. You've got to keep an eye on them more if you're cooking them on the stovetop, so please don't leave them cooking overnight while you sleep
  • At some point, blend or mash up those apples
    • Skin on: run an immersion blender through them while they're in the pot, just be careful not to splash yourself with apple lava. Or let them cool a bit, then run them through a blender, food processor, or a food mill
    • Skin off: squishing them with a potato masher will do the job
  • Let the apples cook down to a good spreadable thickness. You decide what works for you, but I let them cook down a few hours more past the applesauce stage
  • Add spices or sweetener if you want. I usually add cinnamon, cloves, or Chinese Five Spice, and only sometimes add sugar or honey if it's a real tart batch of apples
  • Apple butter will keep awhile in the fridge, especially if it's got tasty spices in it. You can also freeze it or can it, and it'll keep for at least a year
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