Very tasty, very sweet. Um. Eggy? Sticks to the cupcake paper. I dunno if I'll bother making them again, but they're not bad.
Man throwback to this year's batch of applebutter Spoiler It was a smaller kettle so I think we only had 10 gallons? Usually we have 15 but we never eat it all so its probably for the best. It was hard to tell when it was done because it was already sooo thick because the apples were pretty low-moisture this year, but it finally cooked down and started behaving right. Fun times anyway!!!
Whew I Finally wrote up the Old Family Traditional apple butter recipe who wants it. Warning tho its LONG
SO, APPLE BUTTER: its basically cooked, carmelized apples with lots of cinnamon and sugar. It’s a really common thing to make here in Appalachia and lots of families have their own recipes for it. It’s used kinda like a jam or jelly? You spread it on toast or biscuits, and its typically eaten with breakfast, but a lot of people will just eat it plain too (catch my ass eating a whole pint jar sitting under the kitchen table like I’m 6 years old). It’s a big family production to make it, too, because if you’re gonna go to the effort of actually making it you might as well make a LOT because its a ton of work to make any amount. For the traditional method you use a copper kettle (we use a 10 or 15 gal) but you can make it in a slow-cooker or a crock pot, or in a pot on the stove over low heat. There’s a lot of recipes online but the majority of them come from Proper Recipe Websites which try to frame apple butter as this fuckin, ‘oh yummy! applesauce and miniscule amounts of 5 different spices!’ condiment rather than something thats been made for generations in historically Poor As Shit appalachia to preserve every possible scrap of food for the winter so yall are getting the traditional recipe that I grew up with, which is so throat-blisteringly powerful that it will make your eyes water when you eat it (makes ya STRONG) so, HOW TO MAKE APPLE BUTTER: Spoiler: Supplies you’ll need -A BIG OL POT (or slow-cooker/crock pot) -wooden spoon. you can use any spoon but wood feels more authentic -apples. lots. -sugar. lots. -cinnamon oil. You could use ground cinnamon, but it would take a ridiculous amount to get the right flavor. Cinnamon oil is very strong, and a 1 oz bottle can make 10-15 gallons of applebutter, so take from that what you will. -idk man some other spices or whatever? Nutmeg? some people put in cloves? you do you. You get your apples first obviously, but it can’t be just any store-bought apples. It has to be a specific type of apple, because they have to get very very soft when cooked. If you use apples that stay firm when cooked, you’re not gonna get apple butter, you’re just gonna get warm apple chunks. No one wants that. I found a list online of the “Top Recommended Varieties” for making apple butter: Braeburn Cortland Fuji Gravenstein Grimes Golden JonamacIda RedLiberty McIntosh I have never used a damn one of these tbh. We always use Staymen Winesap or Wolf River apples and its always great, so i’ve gotta recommend both of them. (We get them from Jarrett’s Orchard which is 70 miles away but once the apples fall off the trees they sell them for “about $1 a bushel”, which leads to us getting uhhh 55 gallons of apples for $5 its fine i’m fine) Anyway, get your apples. General rule is you’re gonna want about twice as many apples, measured whole, as you want applebutter. So, for 5 gallons of apple butter, use 10 gallons of apples (thats a little over a bushel idk how yall measure large amounts of whole fruits in Europe but in the US a bushel is 9.3 gallons idk man it doesn’t make sense to me either just roll with it). Or if you’re just making a pot-full, just like… Fill the pot up twice with whole apples and that should be enough (proper measurements whom?). For sugar, we always use white but some people use brown. A general guideline is: 1 gal apple butter = 4 lbs sugar half gal (2 quarts) apple butter = 2 lbs sugar 1 quart apple butter = 1 lb sugar Spoiler: European conversion 1 lb sugar = ~450 grams 1 quart = 32 oz = almost a liter (946 mL) 1 gal = 4 quarts = 3.78 L Spoiler: Steps Spoiler: PART 1: Cook Apple So, you got your apples, probably sitting in a big bucket in the middle of your kitchen if you’re anything like my family. Dump them in the sink and wash them well, then get a nice sharp little knife and start cuttin’. You don’t peel them, because the skin is part of what gives the final product its rich red color (unless you used an apple with a yellow or green skin like granny smith, another good applebutter apple). Nah, just cut them into quarters (I recommend cutting them smaller just so they’ll cook a little faster), then cut out the core and any bad spots and rinse them off again. so, Cook em. Get a big ol pot, put about… an inch of water in the bottom. That’s a very scientific measurement ok. Put your apples in the pot and turn the heat to medium til they start to boil, then turn it down low so they’re just simmering. Cover the pot. Depending on how big your pot is, you’ll have to cook them for 30-60 minutes or more. Stir them every few minutes while they’re cooking until they’re nice and soft; when they’re all mushy and break apart easily with the spoon, they’re done. Now, i’ll add a disclaimer here for the next step: some people skip it and just continue cooking the apples down for anoyhwr few hours until they have apple butter, which is fine, but this is MY family’s way of doing it, which makes much smoother apple butter. Plus if you don’t have time to finish making it in a day, you can just put the cooked-down apples in the fridge and start the next step tomorrow. If you wanna just continue on to the next step, thats all good. If you wanna make it The Good Way, take your warm mushy apples and put them through a sieve or food mill (or blender or food processor). The end product will be applesauce. “But Jo!” you cry. “Why did we have to do all that work just to get applesauce when I can just use applesauce from the store!” To which I will tell you, IT AIN’T THE SAME! STORE BOUGHT APPLESAUCE WILL MAKE YOUR APPLEBUTTER SHITTY AND GROSS!!! DON’T DO IT!!! If you want an AUTHENTIC APPALACHIAN APPLEBUTTER you CANNOT use store-bought applesauce. If you genuinely don’t have the time/spoons/resources to do all that other shit then yeah, okay, it’ll be mediocre but it’ll be applebutter. If you can POSSIBLY make it the way i’ve explained I promise it’s worth it. Also store-bought applesauce makes applebutter that won’t keep as long for some reason, idk its just way more prone to spoiling. Spoiler: PART 2: C O O K A P P L E SO! You have your applesauce. If you were making it The Old Way, now would be the time to break out the old copper kettle and scour it clean and build a fire outside. Since I assume most of yall are gonna be making this in a stovetop pot, I’ll explain that method instead. Getcha pot out. Take 2 half-dollar coins (or 4 quarters, or equivalent-sized metal currency) and put them in the bottom of the pot. This keeps the apples from sticking because as you stir, the coins scrape along the bottom. My aunt has a special half-dollar coin that she only uses for making applebutter. That mark across it is from a hatchet but i don’t know the context. I love it. Anyway you get your pot and get your coins and just fuckin dump in the applesauce. Cook it on medium-high heat for uhhhh til it bubbles, idk how long it will take it all depends on how much you have. Stir it constantly. Once it starts bubbling, you can turn it down to medium and add however much sugar you need (as explained in the supplies section). It doesn’t have to be a perfect amount, applebutter isn’t picky like baked goods it doesn’t give a shit if you guesstimate everything. Just keep tasting it til its good. Here comes the fun part you have to uh stir it constantly for 3 ½ to 4 hours straight over medium heat. This is why it’s a family event because your arms get… real tired. Also we have special stirrers just for making apple butter, they have long handles so you don’t have to stand next to the hot fire or risk getting boiling applebutter splashed on you Faces obscured for privacy also don’t pay attention to them licking the applebutter off their hands this was the only pic i had of the big stirrer. Uhh anyway that’s pretty much it! You just cook the apples for hours until they lose a bunch of moisture and the applesauce gets really thick and turns dark, dark red, then you add the cinnamon oil and stir it up and let it cook for another few minutes. Keep tasting it to see if it tastes right, stirring and adding sugar/cinnamon as you need to to make it good, then dip it out and put it in jars! Cook it for 2.5 hours MINUMIM, I don’t care if it seems done, i promise it's not. Spoiler: Etc If you want to sterilize the jars and lids by boiling them thats cool, we only spritz them with bleach then wash them with soap and hot water because applebutter is exceptionally shelf-stable if you do it right (even without using “proper” canning methods). We don’t refrigerate it until we open it to use it, and just leave the jars sitting in milk crates in my mamaw’s garage until we need some. I’ve eaten 6 and 7 year old apple butter that was completely fine. The key is making sure your jars are clean and then putting the apple butter in it and putting the lid on while it’s still near-to-boiling hot. like heres a jar from 2014 that I ate a couple months ago it was damn good Uh if you want to tho you can freeze it or refrigerate it its all cool. For the Slow cooker method do all the above but let it cook uncovered on medium for 2 days and stir it occasionally and then you gotta refrigerate it i think, i don’t know I’ve never made it that way before anyway that’s how you make applebutter
Oh man, I'm glad you posted that, I miss the food from poor-as-shit middle-of-fuckall-nowhere Appalachia. The apple butter was so good. Up here... eh.
To add to the apple butter discussion. My dad's make it before in a crock pot but instead of a bunch of sugar and cinnamon oil he added a couple boxes of red hots. It turned out really good so might be a decent substitute for small batches if you can't find cinnamon oil.
shit man i'm too much of a cripple to stir for 3 1/2 hours but i want also Europeans measure pretty much all produce by weight as anyone sensible should :P
@Mossflower I've had the kind made with Red Hots before! It's not bad, but its never been my favorite (though I'll admit I'm a bit biased :P) I forgot about that method though, thanks for adding it! @IvyLB you can also use a slow cooker! According to a few recipes i checked, you just cook it on low for 10-12 hours and stir it every once in a while, then uncover it and cook it for another 2 hours on high while stirring slightly more often. Takes longer but is much less Extended Stirring Effort EDIT: i love america where we measure produce by volume. I'd like 5 Gallons Of Apples and 3 Pints Of Strawberries Please
I made a crock pot cinnamon roll casserole today and it is V. tasty :'3 really simple/quick to make (minus the two or so hours in the crock pot) too! Bless my cousin's wife for bringing it to Christmas brunch. https://www.eatingonadime.com/crock-pot-cinnamon-roll-casserole/
appalachia as in apple-latch-ia or apple-lay-chia? my whole family is from west virginia and its where I'm currently living, but i grew up in arizona so i dunno the proper way its said and like, what folks actually call it, not what folks on tv call it also bless you and your entire family and your pets and the well being of all of your cars for posting that recipe. i don't even like apple butter that much, but I'm wondering if it would be better made from scratch
I pronounce it Apple-latch-uh. Tbh its jarring to hear it as "Apple-lay-cha" because like... no one who lives here says it like that (plus I've heard many people say "No one can pronounce Appalachia right except the ones who live here" ahaha)
Meanwhile im just learning its not ah pal ah CHEE ah (though im from nowhere near it so i dont count)
