Apple Butter in the Instant Pot

I have a 3 quart, so you may want to double this if you use a 6 or 8 quart Instant Pot.

Some good friends brought me a crap load of apples from their tree, and the first thing that came to mind was “I need apple butter, and lots of it!” It took several hours, but it was worth it. The only reason it took so much time was that I had so much to process and I use the three quart IP most of the time.

After reading several recipes, debating about the spices, and what I really wanted in my apple butter, here is what I did:

Ingredients

• Apples – I diced up the apples, after coring them. 2 1/4 pounds is about the most it will hold. I filled it to the fill line.
• Sugar – 1 Cup did the trick. You may want more, but I don’t like mine to be too sweet.
• Apple Cider Vinegar – 2 Tbsp
• Salt – 1/4 Tsp
• Vanilla Extract – 1 Tsp
• Pumpkin Pie Spice – 3/4 Tsp, it might be good to just  bump it up to 1 Tsp, but I liked the flavor of the first batch, so I kept repeating this measure.

Note: Most of the recipes that I researched asked for Cloves, Cinnamon, Nutmeg, All Spice, and other spices in multiple combinations. Pumpkin Pie Spice is a combination of all of the above, some brands do not include All Spice, and others do. Your mileage may vary.

Steps

1. Clean, core, and dice up apples. Remove any bad spots.
2. Add all ingredients and stir them up in the Instant Pot.
3. Set the Instant Pot to seal and use manual pressure for 8 minutes, use natural release for 15 minutes, and release the rest of the pressure. Be careful, if you pack those apples in like I do, and do a really slow release of the remaining pressure so it doesn’t spit apple juice all over the kitchen. Ask me how I came to that conclusion.
4. Blend the mixture using an immersion blender or a hand mixer, or whatever you may prefer.
5. Remove the fibers and skin pieces that may still remain. I pushed the blended contents through a metal strainer to get rid of that stuff that just doesn’t taste very good.
6. Reduce under heat in a pot (you can use the sauté feature of the IP, but it gets messy) until you get the desired consistency. It really doesn’t take much time as the only liquid added is the apple cider vinegar and the vanilla extract.

Canning – It should be called Jarring

There are tons of videos and articles on canning, and I used two methods just because I wanted to try them both out as an experiment.

1. Instant Pot – My three quart Instant Pot is limited in how many jars it can hold. I added the jars, filled with water just below the max fill line, and set it for manual high pressure for 25 minutes. Every single one of the jars pinged properly.
2. Water Bath – I have used this method with great success in the past, and did the vast majority of my jars by using the water bath method. All jars pinged properly.

Note: Many people are against using the Instant Pot for canning as they don’t believe it will kill all bacteria. There are versions of the Instant Pot that have a canning feature, though.