Slow Cooker Crabapple Chutney

I’ve always felt that my blog is a like a snapshot of my life and right now my life is mostly in my kitchen (as old fashioned and possibly boring as that sounds). I’m spending hours a day prepping food, canning and preserving and when I’m not in the kitchen I’m either in the garden or at the farmers market manning my booth. Don’t get me wrong, I love this kind of work and derive an immense amount of satisfaction from it… but my goodness it’s exhausting!

So because I’m basically sleeping with my canner, I’m back at you with another canning recipe. Now of course you don’t need to can this at all since it’s perfectly delicious and yummy straight out of the slow cooker, but it makes quite a bit so I would suggest cutting down the recipe to suit your needs.

You also don’t need to use a slow cooker if you don’t want to; this recipe can easily be adapted to stovetop. For me, most of my burners are being used constantly all day long, so to have something simmering in a slow cooker without me having to think about it is quite a perk.

I don’t have a crabapple tree so it might seem strange that I’m using them in this recipe. I was lucky enough to be gifted a giant bag of crabapples from a friend. I immediately went into research mode because my first thought was of course “I can totally can these!” Turns out, other than jelly, there weren’t a lot of canning recipes out there for crabapples.

I of course messaged my friend Anita and asked what I could do with them. Her response was “anything you can do with an apple!” Well, duh. So of course if you don’t have crabapples go ahead and substitute with another apple! If you are using a sweeter apple you might want to reduce the sugar a bit… I definitely recommend tasting as you go along.

If you have been thinking about planting a crabapple tree I highly recommend this read by Attainable Sustainable. She’s got me convinced!

Thanks for stopping by for another canning recipe. I hope you enjoy it as much as we do. And now we pay homage to the tiny but fierce crabapple.

Peace,