How To Can Homemade Apple Butter

Red and Green Apples
​An easy process to making homemade apple butter step-by-step

How we can homemade apple butter

Jennifer and I started making apple butter on Friday evening after she got off of work. 

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​We started with 20 lbs. of apples. We used 15 ;bs. of red apples and 5 lbs. of green apples. 

Jennifer is peeling the apples. We used all 20 lbs. of apples. 
We cut the apples in cubes or slices
We put all the apples in a 18 Quart Roaster oven. A roaster oven cooks evenly on all sides. I do it this way because it is easy, it is large and I get at least 36 half pints when I do it this way. 
You can see what the apples looks like after cutting them up. We already added the sugar and spices. (See the above pictures).  

Ingredients Used 
Add a bit of water to prevent scorching and allow the fruit to cook down for a couple hours. When you check it and the fruit is starting to break down, add your sugar and spices. I added 5 pounds of sugar to this batch as well as 1 cup of spices mixed together. Allspice, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon. If you purchase your spices in large containers like at Sam's or Costco, you will find them to be very affordable. 
I mixed my cup of spices to taste. My family likes cinnamon so I used more cinnamon in my mixture. You can also us apple pie spice instead. 
Let the apple, sugar and spice mixture cook at least 8 hours until the fruit becomes very soft.
Start the roaster a 350. After 2 hours I turned it to 200 and let cook all night. 
​It is already starting to smell so good...

Immersion blender works great to blend...
I always blend my apple butter with an immersion blender. It makes it so much easier, you can do it in the roaster without transferring hot fruit to a blender. After the fruit is blended and smooth, allow to cook for another 2 to 3 hours. Then it is ready to can and process. 

Don't forget to put a dish in the freezer so you can test your apple butter. 

Testing Apple-Butter
What the apple butter looks like when it's done cooking. Let water cook out and test like you would jam or jelly. Put a dish in the freezer and put a little on the dish, take a spoon and run it through the middle, it it stays separated its done. 

Jennifer started putting the apple-Butter in hot jars. Make sure your jars are hot before adding cooked apple-butter in them. This will keep jars from breaking. 
We canned ours in half pint jars and got 36 jars. 
​Put apple butter into hot jars, wipe the rims, place hot lids and rings on jar. Place into water bath canner. 

Jennifer is putting the filled jars into the water bath canner. She is using a canning set. This helps you with putting the jars into the hot water. (Very helpful). It also comes with a funnel to help you spoon the liquid into jars. 
Make sure the water is boiling in water bath canner. 
Process in boiling water bath canner for 35 minutes. 
​We set all the jars out on the table to cool. 

This is the list of items I used for canning.

• Roaster oven 18 Quart  
• Immersion Blender  
• Norpro Canning Set 
• Water Bath Canner  
• Canning Ladle 
• Canning Jars

Now are you ready to make some apple butter?
​I hope you try this and hope you love it!
Your homemade jar of apple butter would make great gifts!
To compare another way of making apple butter.
To compare another way of making apple butter
The Pioneer Woman has an apple butter recipe
that is prepared a little different than the way we do ours.
Let me know if you would like more canning post. I would like to hear from you.

Blessings,
Margarita & Stace