I made apple butter today for the first time. I used this Ball recipe. I am a beginner and I am confused by this recipe. It says to add your chopped apples to your Dutch oven and bring them to a boil. It doesn’t say to add any liquid! I panicked and added my 1/4 cup lemon juice and my 3/4 cup water (which was my liquid). Cooked until soft. Put them in my food processor and puréed as much as I could. It certainly wasn’t smooth but I did the best I could. Added that back to my Dutch oven. I then cooked the puree down in the liquid from the original cooking down (Gosh, I hope that makes sense) until it became thickened and finally processed them. It seemed to turn out fine, although it’s not smooth like butter. My concerns are… did I mess up by cooking the apple chunks in all of that liquid? Is it ok for it to not be creamy? How could I bring it to a boil without adding any liquid (like the recipe states)? Thank you for helping this newbie!!
by No_Farm_9062
1 Comment
1. “It’s not smooth like butter”
Immersion blenders are your friend!! That’s what we do with ours to get a consistent texture. You can typically find them for a few bucks on fb marketplace or Nextdoor; you don’t need anything fancy and will find plenty of use for it outside canning.
2. “How do I bring it to a boil?”
Bringing it to a boil is important for safety reasons. Someone more informed on canning apples could chime in on this one, but in general: boiling it is one of the key parts to making foods shelf stable, and therefore you should consider this batch fridge safe but not shelf safe. Generally, though, loooooow and slooooooow is your friend. I think it took us literally an hour to get it to simmer down enough. You’re basically using heat to encourage the juices to release. You can cover it to help trap moisture if you prefer it slightly thinner and/or want it to cook a bit faster.
3. “Is it okay that I added a small amount of water?”
Everything I’ve read… yes. Apparently apples are just pretty hard to make unsafe lol. You shouldn’t need the extra water, but it definitely wasn’t the thing that made this batch unsafe for the shelf.
Good luck! Way to go for a tested recipe, and don’t worry about the panic with the water. Can be is overwhelming and concern for safety being one of your top priorities is the best way to approach it. You’ll get the hang of it!
(FYI: I’m also a new*er* canner, though we did a few hundred jars this last year, I just happen to care a lot about food safety and am a slut for research, so have dove into this stuff quite a bit)