Canning Apple Butter

Crock Pot Apple Butter

This is an incredibly easy method for canning apple butter in a slow cooker or crock pot. Slow cook the apples overnight and your kitchen will smell heavenly in the morning.

Home canned apple butter slathered on lightly toasted and buttered fresh bread. Add a cup of tea or decaf coffee. A favorite bedtime snack for me!

After cooking in the slow cooker you will need to process in a boiling water canner.

You will need enough apples to fill your crock pot. About 6 pounds. I make this in my large 6 quart slow cooker. Adjust the amount of apples and sugar to the size of your cooker.

Prepare

• water bath canner
• canning jars
• canning seals and rings
• jar lifter
• canning funnel
• large pot or blancher
• bowls
• large spoons
• sharp knife
• towels and dish cloths
• whisk
• apple peeler corer slicer this is optional but I HIGHLY recommend it. They are worth their weight in gold! See if you can borrow one if you don't have one. It is an incredible time saver.

• apples -enough to fill your crock pot very full.
• 1 -2 cups sugar (to taste)
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 1/4 tsp salt

Procedure

Peel, core and slice your apples. This is where the apple, peeler, corer, slicer comes in handy. It will cut your time in half. (for a video review click here)

If you are planning on canning apple butter, apple sauce or just plain apples. It really is handy. If you use one, see instructions that came with it.

If you do not have one of these, just prepare your apples the old-fashioned way, with a knife. If you do this with a knife, chop your apples up small.

Put your apples into your crock pot. Fill it up to the brim. The apples will settle quite a bit as they cook and soften.

In a bowl mix sugar, cinnamon, cloves and salt. Pour this mixture over the apples.

Cover and cook approximately 10 hours. Stir occasionally.

As the apples cook you will be able to go from stirring with a spoon to a whisk. They will whisk up nice and smooth.

The color will get darker and darker as the apple butter thickens as well. I love to let them cook good and long. It makes the apple butter so yummy.

Start these in the evening. Cook on high for an hour just before going to bed. Turn down to low and give them a good stir. In the morning whisk them up.

Let the apple butter cook down to your desired consistency. It will end up with a nice scrumptious browned color.

You can leave the lid off for the last hour or two to get a thicker consistency. Fill your jars leaving a 1/4 inch head space. Wipe the rims clean, remove any air bubbles and place your lids.

Process

The National Center for Home Food preservation has you sterilize your pint size jars and then process at 5 minutes. To avoid the task of sterilizing jars I use a 10 minute processing time.

Read here for more information on sterilizing jars for canning.

Process pints and quarts for 10 minutes.

Be sure to adjust processing according to your altitude. For more information see this altitude adjustments page.

Canning Fruits