West Virginia · Sauce
Apple Butter
- Intermediate
- 6 h
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with warm spice humming through the middle, acid holding everything up to the light, trailing gentle sweetness.
Ingredients
- 4kg apples, quartered, cores in
- 1L apple cider
- 400g brown sugar
- 2 tbsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp cloves
- 1 tsp allspice
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 tbsp cider vinegar
The skills inside
The words inside
Sieves: Chinois, Tamis & Food Mill
Allergen screen
None found among the 14 screened.
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Simmer the apples in the cider 45 min until completely soft, then pass through a food mill: the cores and skins give pectin and go in the mill, not the bin. 45 min
- Return the puree to a heavy pot with the sugar, spices, salt, and vinegar.
- Cook over the lowest heat 4-5 hours, stirring often as it thickens and darkens. A spatter screen saves your arms. 300 min
- It is done when a spoonful mounded on a cold plate weeps no liquid at the edges.
- Jar hot and seal, or refrigerate for a month.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Mashing & puréeing 114 recipes
- Smooth to the degree the dish asks for, judged on the tongue rather than by eye: no lumps, no fibres, no grit, unless texture is the point.
- No gluey elasticity: a spoonful drops cleanly off the spoon rather than stretching in a rope behind it.
- The consistency holds: it mounds on a spoon and stays there, neither slumping flat nor standing so stiff that a spoon has to cut it.
- Nothing separates on the plate: no water or fat weeping out into a ring within a minute of serving.
- The colour is even throughout, with no streaks of unincorporated fat, liquid, or seasoning at the edges of the bowl.
Where it goes wrong A starchy ingredient met a high-speed blade, so the cells burst and released their starch: what should be light comes out as an elastic glue that lifts off the spoon in one mass.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Grüner Veltliner
- Also Right
- Vermentino or dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Saison
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus & herbs
The vegetable whisperers: peppery, high-acid whites that flatter greens, roots, and grains without bullying them.
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