Apple Butter

This recipe for homemade apple butter is the solution to post-u-pick-orchard drama: when you realize that the extra 10 pounds of apples you brought home might have been overkill. (Or that some of them aren’t entirely worth eating out of hand.) It’s a natural topping for an autumnal French toast bake, and it’s equally delicious spread on waffles and English muffins, layered into an Appalachian apple stack cake, or dolloped over ice cream or even pork chops. And as a bonus, this easy recipe will make your house smell like an orchard.

Ask the internet how to make apple butter, and you’ll get 285 million results. Popular approaches include using a pressure cooker to speed up the cook time and a hands-off slow-cooker method (which actually doesn’t work so well since it traps moisture). Starting apple butter on the stovetop and finishing it in the oven achieves our desired consistency (spreadable, lush), plus rich color and flavor. We opted for the warming notes of whole, not ground, cinnamon and cloves here, but you should feel free to play around. Add some allspice berries, cardamom pods, or a few strips of lemon zest; bury a vanilla bean into the mix or splash in some vanilla extract. Whatever you love in an apple pie will be excellent here.

Aim for a mix of tart and sweet apples like Granny Smith, Fuji, McIntosh, Honeycrisp, and Golden Delicious—or whatever you brought home from apple picking. You want flavorful apples, but they don’t necessarily need to be the best “baking apples” (which tend to hold their shape when cooked). Here, we want the fruit to fall apart. Chop, but don’t peel or core them, since the skins amp up the apple flavor and the core adds pectin, which helps the apple butter set.

If it’s applesauce you’re after, stop after you pass the apple mixture through the food mill or sieve. Otherwise, transfer the mixture to the oven to thicken it and concentrate the flavor. It’s ready when it’s dark brown and reduced by half.