Good evening, Kibitzers. It’s another one of those annoying Instant Pot diaries—sorry about that. Btw, have you gotten the Instant Pot yet? If not, what the hell are you waiting for?
In my latest effort to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables (and have access to healthier snacks), I bought several pounds of apples to store in my fridge. I ate them for a few days, believe it or not, but then I was over apples (I moved on to Cuties, if you must know). The apples sat there for days, and then days became weeks. After a few weeks of sitting in the fridge, they became less and less appealing, and I started to consider throwing them away to make space for other things. I hate wasting any food, though, so I looked around for ideas. And then it hit me!
I know it’s more of a fall thing (although, here in Houston, who can tell the difference between summer and fall?), but I’ve been really curious about making my own apple butter. I’ve never made it, even though it’s one of my favorite things to put on toast in the morning—I’ve always bought it from the store. I know that apple butter typically takes hours and hours to make, but I also know that I have this Instant Pot sitting on the counter, and what’s the point of the Instant Pot if I can’t take shortcuts? I started searching for Instant Pot apple butter recipes, and I found several of them, but they all gave conflicting advice. Some ingredients made sense, while some recipes used odd ingredients I wouldn’t expect; some recipes called for me to pressure cook the apples and then slow cook for hours after, while other recipes said it could be done a lot quicker. I decided I wanted to try this as an Instant Pot experiment—so I took different ingredients I liked from various recipes, and I decided on the quickest possible cooking time (what’s the point of using the Instant Pot if I end up slow cooking the apple butter for several hours?). I had nothing to lose, after all, except a bunch of apples I didn’t want anyway. I mainly borrowed from this recipe, with ingredient adaptations.
Spoiler alert: It worked out beautifully, and I’ve been enjoying delicious apple butter ever since. Here’s how I did it:
I used somewhere between 4 and 5 pounds of apples. I happened to have Fuji, which is a good apple to use for this. I cut each apple into 6 or 8 slices and put them all in the Instant Pot. Then, I added:
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
I stirred to coat, and then cooked on high pressure for 8 minutes, allowing the pressure to naturally release. This entire process took 30 minutes at most.
Then, I used the immersion blender (I just got one, and I fucking LOVE it) to blend until mostly smooth.
It does need a little extra cooking time to thicken up a bit. I used the sauté function (at the lowest setting) and let it cook for somewhere between 15 and 30 minutes (I wasn’t really keeping track of the time). You really have to keep stirring it or have some kind of splatter guard, because that apple butter will bubble up and burn the shit out of you if you let it.
That’s it! The entire process took around an hour, give or take. Next, I let the apple butter cool and transferred it into small jars. You could can this, but I knew that I would have no trouble at all eating it quickly. I put most of the jars in the freezer (it freezes well) and some of the jars into the fridge. I made this a couple of weeks ago, by the way, and I’m already down to two jars. Whoops.
The flavor and consistency were just about perfect, in my opinion. I’ve been eating it on English muffins ever since. Would it have been better if I’d slow cooked it (or made it the traditional way)? Maybe? Probably? I don’t know. But the method I used yielded apple butter that is better than anything I’ve ever bought from the store, and it couldn’t have been easier to make. I’m calling this another Instant Pot success!
What do you want to kibitz about tonight?