Apple Butter is a useful alternative to applesauce. It is tasty on its own, but is a valuable ingredient in low fat and oil free vegan baking, plant-based dessert recipes, and more. How is it different? Apple Butter is typically further reduced when you are cooking it, so it is a more intense and rich flavor, a bit caramelized, and has a smoother and more dense texture. This makes it particularly great for your baking recipes. You can substitute apple butter when a recipe calls for applesauce.
Some recipes add additional spices or flavors, such as cinnamon or vanilla. I tend to leave these out, as we make a bunch of apple butter in the fall and can it. I like to leave it plan so I can add other flavorings in whatever vegan recipe I am using the apple butter in (or, add it when it’s being eaten!) Apple Butter could be used in a savory recipe, so I am not sure vanilla would be quite right! Making a plain apple butter allows for the most flexibility, particularly if you plan to store it.
This Apple Butter can be made in either the Instant Pot or the Crock Pot (Slow Cooker). For comparison of the two methods, scroll to below the recipes. I provide both processes in the recipe here:
Instant Pot Apple Butter
Ingredients
- 6 lbs apples Cut into 8ths, seeds removed
- 1/3 cup water Or pressed apple juice
Instructions
- Wash apples, and cut into segments (about 1/8ths) and remove seeds.
- Add the water and your cut apples to the Instant Pot, and secure the lid.
- Cook at high pressure for 20 minutes, and use a natural pressure release.
- Blend the apples (you can use an immersion blender in the pot, or remove and use a standard blender and then place the blended apples back in the Instant Pot).
- Remove the lid, turn on sauté and set it at low. Leave it simmering for about 45 minutes, but check and stir every so often until you reach the desired thickness.
- Can your apple butter, or store in an air-tight container in the fridge for about a week or the freezer for a few months.
Crock Pot Apple Butter
Ingredients
- 6 lbs apples Washed and cut
- 2 cups water Or pressed apple juice
Instructions
- Wash apples, and cut into segments (about 1/8ths) and remove seeds.
- Add the water and your cut apples to the Crock Pot, place the lid on, and cook on low for about 10 or 11 hours or so.
- Blend the apples (you can use an immersion blender in the pot, or remove and use a standard blender and then place the blended apples back in the Crock Pot).
- Move the lid slightly askew so the Crock Pot is vented. Cook on low and let simmer for another couple hours so the sauce thickens further (you can also do this on the stovetop over medium heat, it’s a bit quicker).
- Can your apple butter, or store in an air-tight container in the fridge for about a week or the freezer for a few months.
Cutting, skinning, coring apples?
We typically leave the skins on the apples (we are using apples off our own trees, so they are not sprayed). We wash our apples in a water and hydrogen peroxide cleaning solution prior to cutting.
We cut our apples into roughly 8ths. We pick out seeds, but don’t bother fully coring the apples.
Instant Pot vs the Crock Pot and notes
The Crock Pot (slow cooker) yields both richer color and flavor, however as you can expect this is at the expense of 12-14h cook time (versus about 90 minutes in the Instant Pot). It takes a long time, so make a huge batch and can it for over the winter!
Instant Pot:
We tried the pot-in-pot method for creating apple butter in the Instant Pot, where you use an inner pot (linked below). This caused the Instant Pot to come up to pressure better, but of course it reduces the apple capacity by about half. This may be an issue if you are trying to process a lot of apples, as we were this fall! So if you are not processing a ton of apple butter, you may want to try this method of cooking if you have an inner pot you use.
Fantastic. Needed a fat substitute for a cake recipe and found this. Made the InstaPot version and the (completely unsweetened but for the apples) results were superb. Going to give the crock pot version a go too. This stuff is great as a fat replacement, and as a spread for toasted homemade bread or as a sweetener in my morning oatmeal. Great stuff. Thanks for the recipe!