Let's Make Some Apple Butter

You'll be glad we did.

Oct 08, 2020

Hi Friends,

We are coming up on the tail end of apple season in Georgia, so if you want to hit the orchards around Ellijay and Blue Ridge before the apples are gone, you need to get on up there. Sadly, the Georgia Apple Festival, which has been held in Ellijay every October since 1971, has been cancelled due to public health concerns about coronavirus. The orchards are still open, so you can create your own apple festival experience by visiting individual orchards in the area.

Fall apple picking is one of my family’s favorite things to do, and we did just that a few weeks ago, coming home with a mixed half bushel of several varieties of apples. We always like to visit B. J. Reece Orchard because they are a dog friendly place, and the late, great Dixie Jacobs, Boykin Spaniel extraordinaire, loved to go apple picking. This year we added a stop at Mercier Orchard in Blue Ridge to stock up on their hard cider. They are also known for their apple cider doughnuts in the café and fried pies in the bakery.

(On a side note, it just occurs to me that I might be related to the family that owns B. J. Reece Orchard, assuming the family that owns it are Reeces. We discussed last week how I’m related to the Blairsville Reeces, and Ellijay is not far from Blairsville. I’ll have to ask Bob.)

One of the hazards of apple picking is having to figure out what to do with all the apples when you get home. There are only so many pies I can make and eat, so this year, I made apple butter with our bounty.

Apple butter is a staple of Southern pantries, particularly in the Appalachian region. Food historians believe the first apple butter recipes arrived in America with German settlers in the mid-Atlantic region, and the recipes spread throughout the Appalachian Mountains from there. Old school apple butter recipes often involve a big copper kettle, a fire, and 10-12 hours of stirring.

I don’t have a lot of childhood memories of apple butter, although I’m sure it was on Granny Cantrell’s breakfast table, so I didn’t have a go-to apple butter recipe when I got home with my cache of apples. I set out in search of the perfect apple butter recipe on the internet and found they fall into roughly two camps. The recipes that styled themselves as “old fashioned” boiled down the apples in apple cider or apple cider vinegar with added spices like cinnamon and cloves. I like to go with the original when I can, so I tried this recipe first. Four pounds of Stayman Winesap apples and a cup of apple cider reduced down on the stovetop to roughly two and a half pints of apple butter. It turned out a lighter color than I expected and had a crisp-sweet taste like biting into a fresh apple. It was good but not really what I was looking for.

My Twitter pal Teri recommended making apple butter in the slow cooker, so I set up recipe experiment number two for Slow Cooker Apple Butter. This recipe called for six and a half pounds of apples (I used a mix of Stayman Winesap, Granny Smith, Golden Delicious, and some red apples I don’t remember the name of), two types of sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, salt, and vanilla. It cooked for twelve hours, and the apples reduced down to two pints of apple butter. Where the first recipe had a fresh apple flavor almost like very thick and smooth applesauce, the second tasted like all the yummy goodness of baked apples. It was hands down my favorite.

I cannot begin to tell you how easy it is to make apple butter in case you want to try it yourself. If you can peel and slice an apple and operate a Crockpot, you can make apple butter. Thanks to the wonders of modern transportation there should be plenty of fresh, in-season apples to be had in farmers markets everywhere for the next few weeks. And honestly, once you coat the apples in sugar and spices and cook them way down, the run of the mill apples in your local grocery store should make a fine apple butter.

What do you do with apple butter?

I like apple butter on toast and buttermilk biscuits, but I know it’s much more versatile than that. I put some of the Slow Cooker Apple Butter on a grilled cheese sandwich, and it was divine. If you like to melt cheddar cheese on your slice of apple pie—and who doesn’t—you will like that flavor combination. For my next culinary stunt, I plan to put apple butter on a bacon cheeseburger instead of ketchup and mustard and see what happens. I might get nutty and put a fried egg on it too in keeping with the breakfast ingredient theme. I plan to warm up some in the microwave and use it as a sauce on pork tenderloin. I think it would be really good as a base for a homemade BBQ sauce, and I have it on good authority (my friend Christina) that apple butter is amazing paired with sausage cheese balls. A quick check with Google found some additional ideas, and I plan to try out a few of those as well.

If you’re already sick of all things pumpkin spice, apple butter is a good alternative for an official flavor of fall. You should make yourself some.

B.J. Reece Orchard

Recommended Stops in Downtown Blue Ridge, Georgia

We have eaten at the Fightingtown Tavern several times, and everything we’ve had there has been delicious. They have outdoor seating, which is great in the days of COVID-19. They are dog friendly as well.

Out of the Blue is an amazing gourmet food and wine shop. They have done a great job curating their wine selection. The staff is very knowledgeable, and every bottle of wine I’ve bought there has been delicious.

For a quick, refreshing pick me up, pop in to Tupelo Tea. In addition to their merchandise of tea and honey, they have a drink bar with some yummy flavor combinations.

Interesting Stuff From the Interwebs:

File this under Things I’d Pay Extra To See: the Lincolnshire Wildlife Park in the UK had to take five African grey parrots off exhibit when they started cussing at visitors.

https://www.fox5dc.com/news/zoo-removes-parrots-from-view-after-they-kept-cursing-at-visitors

A little over a year ago, Willie McNabb started a firestorm on Twitter when he tweeted the following to Jason Isbell in reaction to his tweet about assault weapons.

Willie McNabb 🐗 @WillieMcNabb

@JasonIsbell Legit question for rural Americans - How do I kill the 30-50 feral hogs that run into my yard within 3-5 mins while my small kids play?

The city folk on Twitter didn’t know feral hogs are a thing, but those of us in the rural South know all about them. Popular Mechanics talks to us about the “feral swine bomb” ticking away:

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