Crockpot Apple Butter Recipe I Make Every Fall

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There is a half bushel of apples sitting on the floor of our mudroom right now, and a good third of them are bruised. That was on purpose. Seconds cost about half what the pretty ones do, they cook down exactly the same, and this crockpot apple butter recipe is the reason I buy them by the box every September.

I make apple butter in the slow cooker because I am not going to stand over a pot and stir for six hours. I have an autoimmune disease, and on a lot of days the difference between making something from scratch and not making it at all comes down to whether the recipe lets me walk away from it. This one lets me walk away. You chop, you fill the crock, you put the lid on, and then you go do the rest of your life while the whole house starts to smell like the inside of a cider donut.

Lochlan is nineteen months old now and he eats it by the spoonful straight off the jar lid, which is the only review I need.

The short version

Five pounds of sweet apples, peeled and chopped, into a slow cooker with brown sugar and warm spices. Low for 10 hours with the lid on. Blend it smooth. Then another hour or two on low with the lid propped open so the extra water cooks off and it goes dark and thick. That is the whole thing. No stirring, no candy thermometer, no standing at the stove.

What you need

The apples matter more than anything else here. Use sweet, soft ones. Gala, Fuji, Golden Delicious, McIntosh, or honestly whatever the orchard has in the seconds bin. I usually end up with a mix, and a mix is better than one variety anyway. Skip Granny Smith as your main apple. They stay firm and tart and you will end up adding sugar to fix it, which defeats the point.

• 5 pounds apples, peeled, cored and roughly chopped (about 12 to 14 medium)
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, stirred in at the end
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice, optional, if your apples are very sweet

That is it. No pectin, no canning salt, no apple cider. Apples have enough liquid in them that adding any is how people end up with apple butter that never thickens.

On sugar: one cup is on the low side for five pounds of fruit, and that is deliberate. Most recipes call for closer to two. If your apples are sweet you can go down to three quarters of a cup and not miss it. I pull out a small jar for Lochlan before the sugar goes in, which takes ten seconds and means he gets what is basically thick unsweetened applesauce.

How I make it

1. Peel, core and chop the apples. Rough chunks, an inch or so. They are going to collapse completely, so nobody is measuring. This is the only part of the recipe that takes real effort, and if you have someone in the house who will crank a peeler, hand it off.

2. Put everything except the vanilla in the slow cooker. Apples, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, salt. Stir it around so the spices are not sitting in one clump. It will look impossibly full and dry. Leave it alone.

3. Cook on low for 10 hours, lid on. I start it after dinner and it is ready when I come down in the morning. By hour two it will have released enough liquid to look like it is swimming, which is normal. You do not need to stir it, though I usually do once when I pass through the kitchen.

4. Blend it smooth. Immersion blender, right in the crock, two minutes. Go longer than you think. The difference between good apple butter and great apple butter is that it should be completely silky, with no fruit texture left at all.

5. Cook uncovered on low for 1 to 2 more hours. This is the step people skip and it is the whole reason apple butter is apple butter and not applesauce. Prop the lid on a wooden spoon or take it off entirely. The water cooks off, the sugars darken, and the color shifts from pale tan to deep russet brown. Stir every 20 minutes or so.

6. Stir in the vanilla off the heat. Adding it at the start means you cook the flavor right out of it.

You will know it is done when a spoonful mounded on a cold plate holds its shape and does not weep water around the edges. Five pounds of apples gives me about three pints.

How we actually eat it

Apple butter is not just for toast, although it is very good on toast. Ours goes on a slice of sourdough with butter underneath it most fall mornings. It gets stirred into oatmeal, spooned over plain yogurt, swirled into pancake batter.

The one that surprised me is pork. A few spoonfuls whisked with mustard and a splash of vinegar makes a glaze for pork chops or a roast that tastes like it took a lot more thought than it did. On a low energy week it is the entire dinner plan, which is the same logic behind everything in my from-scratch meal prep.

It is also the easiest thing in the world to give away. A half pint jar, a square of fabric on the lid, a bit of twine. I keep a shelf of them from October through Christmas for teachers, neighbors, and anyone who drops something off at the door.

Storing it, and why I skip canning

In the fridge it keeps for about two weeks in a clean jar. In the freezer it keeps for a year and this is what I actually do with most of it. Wide mouth, straight sided half pint jars, an inch of headspace so the glass does not crack, straight into the deep freeze. One jar thaws overnight in the fridge and gets eaten within the week.

I do not water bath can this, and I want to be honest about why. Not because apple butter cannot be canned, it absolutely can. It is that I have not tested this particular recipe for canning, and processing times are not something I am willing to guess at in a post other people are going to follow. If you want shelf stable jars, use a tested recipe from a canning source that gives you processing times for your altitude. The freezer is not a compromise here. It tastes exactly the same.

Questions I get about apple butter

What is the difference between apple butter and applesauce?

Time. Apple butter is applesauce that kept cooking until the water was gone and the sugars caramelized. That is why it is dark brown and applesauce is pale, and why apple butter is spreadable and applesauce is not.

Is there butter in apple butter?

None. The name is about the texture, how it spreads like softened butter, not the ingredients. It is dairy free and vegan as written.

Can I make it without peeling the apples?

You can, and plenty of people do. The skins add pectin and a little color. I peel because even a good blend leaves flecks of skin behind and I want it completely smooth. If you skip peeling, blend longer and consider running it through a food mill.

My apple butter is too thin. What do I do?

Keep it on low with the lid off and give it more time. Another hour, then check again. It also sets up noticeably as it cools, so pull a spoonful onto a cold plate before you decide it has failed.

Can I cook it on high instead?

Yes. High for 5 hours gets you to the same place as low for 10, then blend and finish uncovered the same way. Low is better if you can spare the time, mostly because the long slow cook is what develops the deeper flavor.

How many apples is five pounds?

Roughly 12 to 14 medium apples, or a little over a peck. If you are buying at an orchard, a half bushel is about 20 pounds and makes four batches, which is a very reasonable thing to do in one weekend.

One more thing

If you have never made apple butter before, make it on a day you are home anyway. Not because it needs you, it truly does not, but because the smell is most of the point. Ten hours of cinnamon and apples is the thing that tells this house it is fall, more than the leaves or the sweaters or anything on the calendar.

Then the peach crisp gets put away until next summer, and we start over.