Kirsties Boxing Day Chutney Recipe
Dec 10, 2009
Boxing Day Chutney as seen on Kirsties Homemade Christmas
2lb/900g onions sliced
2lb cooking apples chopped
1 pkt/340g cranberries
2pints cider vinegar
2oz/50g fresh root ginger(before pealing) finely diced
1tbsp coarse sea salt
tsp mixed spice
zest of 2 oranges
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2lb naturally dried apricots chopped
1 pkt dates (175g/60z)pitted and chopped
1lb raisins
Juice of 8 oranges/1 pint orange juice
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2lb white sugar.
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Place all the first ingredients in a saucepan gently bring to the boil.
The object is to let the onions go transparent, the cranberries start to pop and the apple break down. You don't want to lose all texture so a 5min simmer once at boiling point should do. Remember to stir.
In a seperate bowl mix the dried fruit and pour over the orange juice. Stir well. The mixture should absorb all the orange juice in approx 20mins
The dried fruit can be done before the ingredients for cooking to save time.
Add the marinated fruit to the saucepan with the sugar.
Stir well and bring back to boiling point, stirring all the time. Don't leave the saucepan at this time or the contents will catch and taint the chutney. The free liquid will start to thicken quite quickly and the chutney can then be bottled. Lid immediately.
For the sizes of fruit/technique see Kirsties video .
Please add comments it you need further info and I will post with the response.
64 comments
Hi Ally
If when you taste it today it is still too sour put it back in the pan and add a little (50g at a time) more sugar until it is just a little tangy as it will sweeten on its own in the jar as the sugars are drawn out of the fruit. Sometimes cider vinegar is less sweet depending on the brand, if you use ordinary or wine vinegar you will either need to store the chutney for a couple of months or balance with more sugar. Equally if you use ‘orange’ apricots they are less sweet than the brown sun dried ones. Hope that helps
Thank you for your quick respond. I have actually put the dark brown sugar in last night in hope it will improve. And looks like it did. Is not as bad today as it was last night. Yes I have used orange apricots as local shop didn’t have the other option. So looks like it may be ok by Boxing Day :-) thanks for help
I made this chutney last night, with pears instead of apples (my wife is intolerant to apples). I used plain distilled vinegar as well, instead of cider vinegar. It turned out beautifully. We just had some for lunch with bread and cheese. Thanks for sharing the recipe. I see from some of your other comments elsewhere that perhaps I should have used wine vinegar instead of malt, but it still tastes great. It does have a sort of mulled wine flavour, so perhaps red wine vinegar would work well? (maybe next time). Thanks again.