Cooking with Apple Butter

[suki]

So, I spent two days cooking unripe apples into apple butter. (the tree was overloaded, branches were breaking we had to remove some apples and the best thing we could find to do with them was make apple butter). My sister-in-law and I finished up with 7.5 gallons of finished apple butter from this first batch. And, there's more to come. Her mom's tree is overloaded too.

So, while I love apple butter on my toast, biscuits, pancakes and french toast... just what else can you make with it? Well, you might be surprised!

I did some searching around and found tons of recipes using apple butter. We tried one last night... pork chops with apple butter, baked or put in an aluminum foil pouch and grilled. Oh my! That was good stuff! I found some pastry recipes also.

Anyone cook with apple butter and have some recipes to share? I know I'm going to have plenty of it this year!

[AmyBoz]

Suki, I posted to the other apple butter thread a similar question, but I'll ask it again here.

How exactly do you make apple butter (and please note, I'm not familiar with terms like "Mill the butter"). Also, do you have to make 7.5 gallons at a time, or can you go less? I don't know how to can or jar or anything like that, so is it possible to make a smaller amount that won't go bad?

[suki]

I would strongly recommend making much less! This was our first time to make it. We had four cases of unripe apples and no idea how much that would make. Ripe apples cook down and have more juice so the yield is usually less than you think when you start out. However, with the unripe apples, they are so dense and filled with starch that our batches actually grew. We agreed that in the future, we'd rather deal with one case at a time.

There are a lot of different recipes all over the net. I'd say find one that works for what you have available and play with it to make it your own.

Milling the apples = After boiling the apples you place them in a food mill. Mine looks like a funky pot with a sieve for the bottom and a big paddle with a handle on it. You force the apples through the sieve. If you don't have a food mill, a sieve and a wooden spoon will work. This takes off the peels (for ripe apples, coring them would make things easier, but for the unripe ones they were too hard so we just boiled them with core, peel, and all) and makes the apples a sort of applesauce consistency.

Apples are considered acidic so you can water bath can them, which is the simplest form of canning and if you'd like to get started with canning... this would be a great place to start (it's almost fool proof). But, yes, you can absolutely make smaller batches and put them in the fridge.

Again, I didn't really use a recipe so I'm not much help in that regard.

[shortstack]

I would recommend making it in the crock pot. Here is a great recipe for it:
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/All-Day...-2/Detail.aspx

Andrea

Suki, I posted to the other apple butter thread a similar question, but I'll ask it again here.

How exactly do you make apple butter (and please note, I'm not familiar with terms like "Mill the butter"). Also, do you have to make 7.5 gallons at a time, or can you go less? I don't know how to can or jar or anything like that, so is it possible to make a smaller amount that won't go bad?

[Ceashels]

That sounds like it was a lot of fun and a lot of work. Have you tried substituting apple butter into cake and muffin recipies? I've done it the same way applesauce is substitued. You could also try to adapt a pumpkin bread recipe as it is just one pureed fruit for another pureed fruit. You might need to thicken the apple butter up so it isn't as watery, but that depends on what your finished product was like.

It can also be served with cheeses anything from brie to cheddar would be good, but I would forgo the blues unless you really like blue cheese.

I'm a fan of blending fruit and savory flavors so using it inplace of mayo or mustard would work for me on turkey or beef sandwiches.