Delicious & Frugal Homemade Apple Butter Recipe For Canning

You will need pint jars with the rims and the lids, a bag of apples, sugar, c, and cinnamon. 

1. Wash and slice apples

Start the process by taking your apples over to the sink and giving them a good wash. Then cut them into slices, leaving the peel on. The peel will give our homemade apple butter color. 

2. Boil the apples

Place your apples in a pot with about an inch of water. We do not cover the apples with water because we are making a sauce. Turn the stove to high and start boiling them. It is important to keep an eye on them, so they don’t scorch. If you need to add water, you can. 

3. Simmer apples

Once the water comes to a rolling boil, give it a stir, and turn the heat down to medium letting the apples simmer into a sauce. 

4. Remove the apples from the heat

Once your apples are cooked down remove them from the heat. You will know they are ready once they are soft and breaking apart. The amount of time it takes the apples to cook depends on the type of apple you are using. These apples took about 20 minutes. I recommend using Gala apples as I have the most success with them. 

5. Strain apples through a colander

The one tool that you may need is a cone-shaped colander. This helps to strain the apples and leave behind the peels and fibers, so you are left with just a smooth sauce. 

Push your cooked apples through the colander until there is no more sauce coming through.

This is what your sauce should look like as it comes through the colander. 

6. Season your sauce 

We used about 15 apples to get 7 cups of sauce but that will depend on the size of apples you buy. Once you have finished straining the sauce discard the peels and fibers and add the sauce back into a pot.  

Now add 7 cups of sugar . . . 

3 tablespoons of cinnamon (If that sounds like too much cinnamon for your taste buds, you can cut back on it) . . .

and lastly a packet of fruit pectin. This is a powder that gives the sauce a thick, gelatinous texture, just like you would have with jelly or a jam. You can find this in any grocery store.

Now, give it all a good stir.

7. Reheat your sauce

Place your pot back on the stove and bring the sauce to a boil. This should take about 11 minutes. Once the apple sauce is nice and thick it is ready for canning.

8. Canning your sauce

While the sauce is reheating, prepare an area for canning. Make sure your glass jars have been cleaned and heated and place them on a towel. You will also need a funnel to ladle your homemade apple sauce into the jars neatly.

Make sure to wipe any excess sauce from the top of the jar so that it doesn’t interfere with the sealing process.

Leave about an inch of space between the sauce and the top of the jar so that there is plenty of room to expand and get a good seal. You also want to make sure to seal the lid nice and tight.

9. Sealing the jars

We have our homemade apple butter in our jars. Once you hear a pop, you know the jars have been sealed. If you can push down the center of the lid and it pops, it is not sealed. You will know for sure that it has sealed if you push down, and nothing happens. We have made 6 pints, so when I hear 6 pops, I know they have finished sealing. 

Tip: if one does not seal, don’t discard it. You won’t be able to shelf this one, but you can put it in the refrigerator and eat it first.

If you are wondering how long this apple butter recipe will last on the shelf, I would say about a year. However, it won’t last that long at my house, it’s just too good!

We've all been talking about food shortages and things like that, and if I was hungry, I would be very happy to have some of this on my shelf. Another great tip to save even more is to buy Deer apples when deer season opens, they are cheap and work great for homemade apple butter. 

Apple butter recipe

Here is the delicious result of this apple butter recipe. I made some biscuits and pairing the two together makes a perfect old-timey country breakfast.

If you would like to find out more about what my mama teaches me, leave a comment down below.