This is what I canned one day last week: Apple Butter, Marmalade, and Chutney. If you live in the Pacific Northwest, you are probably wondering where I got apples from this early- our first apples to ripen, Gravensteins, won’t be ripe for a couple of weeks yet.
This is a five gallon bucket full of Gravenstein apple thinnings. Yes, you’re supposed to thin apples when they are a lot smaller. As you can see, however, I didn’t get to it until I noticed that the tree is LOADED this year and the apples where so squished together that I was looking at a bunch of small apples if I didn’t give them some room quickly.
But since these apples were so much bigger than normal thinnings, I couldn’t bear to throw them away, so I decided to use them in recipes that call for sugar to offset the sour taste. And these babies were SOUR. Whew- talk about a pucker when I bit into one to see what I was dealing with!
I peeled and cut the biggest apples for the marmalade and chutney and made these first.
We really like Addictive Tomato Chutney (it’s my ketchup!) and sometimes I make a rhubarb chutney, but I’ve never made (or eaten) Apple Ginger Chutney before. Since apples and pork are often served together, I’m thinking it would be good with pork- what do you think? Since I wasn’t sure about this recipe, I only made four 1/2-pints.
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I’ve also never made marmalade before, either. I decided to make an apple and lemon marmalade to use as glazes for ham and chicken, since I don’t think my family will be into putting lemons, rinds and all, on their toast. *smile*
I couldn’t find a recipe that didn’t use commercial pectin, however. I know that under-ripe apples are super high in pectin (it’s one of the fruits used in commercial pectin, I believe) so I didn’t want to use additional pectin. In the end I used a recipe from one of my cookbooks for apple marmalade, but added lemon instead of the orange it called for. Here’s my adapted recipe:
[recipe]
Simple Apple-Lemon Marmalade (for glazes or toast)
- Heat 1-1/2 cups of water with 5 cups of sugar until dissolved
- Add 8 cups of chopped apples, 2 Tb. lemon juice, and one thinly sliced lemon (including rind)
- Boil this until it reaches the jelly stage (220 degrees), about 15-20 minutes, skimming any foam
- Fill jars, seal, and then process them in a water bath canner for 10 minutes. (For more information on canning, see Water Bath Canning Step-by-Step)
Makes seven 1/2-pints.[/recipe]
For the remaining small apples- quite a lot that I knew would take forever to peel- I simply cored them, cut them in quarters, and cooked them in a small amount of water until soft (you do have to stir often, though, because they will stick). Then I put them through one of these apple presses (I’m not sure of the actual name…) to get a smooth sauce and leave the skins behind. Easy.
Since I had been cutting apples and canning most of the day by this point, I decided to make apple butter in the slow cooker. I poured the (very sour) applesauce into my 6-quart slow cooker, added brown sugar, honey, and spices and set it to cook on high for an hour before turning it down to low for overnight.
The next morning I removed the lid and turned it up to high again to make the sauce thicker. It took about two more hours, actually, to get it to the thick consistency I like. Then I processed them in 1/2-pint jars for 10 minutes. I got nine half-pints- which will probably be all the apple butter we need for the year.
All this from apples I would have thinned and thrown away just a month earlier. With the addition of sugar, these all tasted great- you’d never know they started out as under-ripe apples!
Hmmm…maybe I should put off thinning the apples every year?
-Jami
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Thanks for the link. It is very informative and the steps are clear and looks easy. Will follow it when i want to make the marmalade.
Pls can you show how to make orange marmalade. My children like it a lot. I usually buy it around #600 (600 Naira, around $4), but since coming upon your blog, am determined to make as many things myself as i can. Thanks
I’m so glad you are desiring to make your own food, Nnenna! AND I’m glad to help any way I can! I don’t know if I’ll ever do a recipe for marmalade, though, as my family doesn’t enjoy it – unlike yours! – but here is a link to a recipe from a site I love all about picking/growing/making your own food:
http://www.pickyourown.org/marmalade.php
Hope this is helpful to you! 🙂
thanks for the post! I recently moved to a home with two apple trees that always put out small apples — probably because I never knew how to thin them. Unfortunately they are not dwarf so thinning them would be difficult anyway — but at least I have some ideas on what to do with all the small (really tart) apples!
Am anxious to make your recommendations for unripe apple culls. We are experiencing a heavy crop of orchard fruits this year. I understand that to manage organically , all damaged fruits should be removed, shallow tilling to keep bugs from pupating, and chickens clean up what they can reach. The branches are groaning under the weight of this crop, so I remove a quarter of the fruit, before branches break. That’s a lot of unripe fruit! Will try some pear culls in chutney recipes…
Thank you so much for this post. We just had a tree fall and I didn’t want to waste the apples. Now I know I won’t have to 🙂
Ellen- We planted our semi-dwarf trees 6 years ago and this is the first year we’ve had this much fruit.
I don’t spray them with anything. I’ve used a lure and trap for apple maggots because they can destroy the whole apple, but I just deal with the apple coddling moth, as they are just in the core. (I found the lures and traps at Gardens Alive). But I never refreshed the lures this year, so we’ll see how much damage there is- there wasn’t much in this unripe batch.
Kristin- Great idea which I’ve thought about but haven’t tried yet. Now you’ve got me thinking about it again…
It all looks so yummy! You are correct about the green (under-ripe)apples being high in pectin. Perfect for boiling the cores and the skins down to make apple pectin to make jams and jellies. The taste of jams made with apple pectin is so much better than with commercial pectin and jellies come out crystal clear! 🙂
Hello Jami
I am impressed. When you made all this, just from the thinnings, I’m wondering what you’ll do with that bumper crop when it’s ready.
I have Gravenstein apples in my garden too but this year there are very few apples.
Anna
How long ago did you plant your tree? My in-laws planted what looked like sticks in the ground and finally…some x years later (can’t remember how many), they are producing apples. Do you treat them organically or with a little help?
Anna- Well, we actually like to eat tart green apples like gravensteins (just riper, though!) in my house, :-), but I’m looking forward to making some applesauce and canning it, as we didn’t get any apples last year. I also like to freeze some to use in crisps and smoothies (usually added with berries).
I’m sorry your tree is bare this year! Seems like apples are an every-other-year thing!