Apple Butter Canning Recipe: Water-Bath, No Pressure Canner

Pap Steve here. My grandmother kept a root cellar full of jars on the family dairy farm up in the Catskills, my mother learned canning at her elbow, and Mom passed it on to me. Today we keep it going on our South Carolina homestead with an apple butter canning recipe, and Pepper on full-time crumb patrol. NOTE: SMALL BATCH! This video is a small-batch cook-along made with a 3 lb bag of McIntosh apples while visiting my father. It is NOT the full NCHFP batch on the website. The video shows the process on a small cook. Use the written recipe amounts for canning safety (8 lbs apples, the full sugar, vinegar and spice amounts, and the altitude times) linked below, not a scaled guess from what you see on camera. Apple butter is where I tell folks to start. It's sweet and high-acid, so it goes in a plain boiling-water canner. No pressure canner needed. The cook is mostly stirring, and processing is a few minutes, not an hour. I don't freelance on canning recipes: this is the tested National Center for Home Food Preservation (NCHFP) recipe, ingredients, headspace, and times exactly as published. All I add is the commentary. What you'll see in this video: • Prepping apples (no peeling, the food mill handles the skins) • Cooking soft, pressing, and the long cook-down with sugar and spice • Sterilizing jars (required, since processing is under 10 minutes) • The spoon test and plate test for doneness • Filling with ¼-inch headspace and water-bath processing • Altitude times, the slow-cooker option, and storage notes Full written apple butter canning recipe (altitude chart, slow-cooker option, field notes): https://papstevereviews.com/apple-but... Ingredients (NCHFP tested recipe, don't change a thing): • 8 lbs apples (Jonathan, Winesap, Stayman, Golden Delicious, McIntosh, or other tasty varieties) • 2 cups apple cider • 2 cups vinegar • 2¼ cups white sugar • 2¼ cups packed brown sugar • 2 Tbsp ground cinnamon • 1 Tbsp ground cloves No thickeners: no flour, cornstarch, Clear Jel, or pectin. Time does the thickening. Processing (boiling-water canner, hot pack), half-pints or pints: 5 min at 0–1,000 ft, 10 min at 1,001–6,000 ft, 15 min above 6,000 ft. Quarts: 10 / 15 / 20 min. Know your altitude. Don't guess. CHAPTERS 0:00 Prep the apples 1:15 Cook them soft 3:15 Press it 4:20 Cook it down 8:25 Fill the jars 9:30 Process in the water bath 10:30 Let 'em rest Yield: about 9–10 pints | Total time: about 4 hours stovetop (8–10+ hours slow-cooker option) | Difficulty: Easy. If you can stir and watch a clock, you're qualified. Drop your favorite way to eat apple butter (or your first canning disaster) in the comments, and hit Subscribe for more Kitchen & Canning. God Bless Y'all, Pap Steve papstevereviews.com #AppleButter #Canning #WaterBathCanning #HomeCanning #Homestead #GenX