• Prep
• Quarter and roughly chop your apples (peel if you feel like it is necessary) and place in the bowl of your Instant Pot or Slow Cooker.
• Add brown sugar, granulated sugar, salt, cloves, all spice, nutmeg, and vanilla to the apples and mix to ensure everything is combined and coated. Add a half cup of water if pressure cooking
• The apples will quickly fill up your Instant Pot and it will be very full to add your spices. It’ll cook down and reduce volume as it cooks.

Cooking the Apple Butter

• To Pressure Cook: Turn Instant Pot to “Manual” and pressure cook on high pressure for 90 minutes. Allow to natural release for 10 minutes before releasing any remaining pressure. To Slow Cook: Let cook over night or at least 10 hours.
• Once your apples have softened, we will want to blend them. I highly recommend an immersion blender, but you can also work in batches with a blender to break the chunks down. Blend them down until they are very smooth.
• Add zest of 1 lemon and the juice to the apple butter mixture.
• At this point, you have pretty delicious apple sauce, but we want apple butter so we will begin cooking it down to get the jammy consistency. If you are using the Instant Pot, use the sauce feature on high to begin cooking down the mixture, or transfer to a large pot on medium heat.

Reducing the Apple Butter

• Cook stirring occasionally until steam comes from the pot. This is a great point to get your jars ready/sterilized if you are canning them! This will can about 6-7 half pints.
• Once it begins to bubble, lower the heat, and place a screen (like you might use for frying) and/or place the lid askew from the pot. This is very helpful when you don’t want apple butter on your ceiling. Ask me how I know!
• Let the apple butter cook and stir every 5 minutes very carefully (it bubbles and pops and can sting if it lands on you). Repeat until desired thickness and flavor, but I prefer to cook it for at least 30 minutes repeating this step until is very dark brown and sticks to the spatula without falling off.

For Canning

• Fill sterilized jars with apple butter leaving at least 1/4” inch headspace from the top
• Use a chopstick or other tool to ensure there are no bubbles in the apple butter
• Wipe rim down with water or vinegar and then place lids and rings and screwing lids on until they are fingertip tight.
• Place in hot/boiling water and water bath them for 10 minutes (15 minutes if you decided to use pint jars)
• Remove from canner and place on counter to be left undisturbed for 24 hours.
• Remove rings and store in a cool dark place for up to 12 months