Green Tomatoes Week: Tangy Chutney

Chutney is a well-loved relish here in Ireland, and is popular throughout the British Isles. Why not introduce it to your family? It’s easy to make, and is a great alternative to pickling or traditional canning for many vegetables. Here, I share my Green Tomato Chutney recipe.

Green Tomato Chutney

1. Place a stainless steel pan on the stovetop, and pour a pint of vinegar and 8 oz. of sugar into the pan. Begin to heat the mixture gently over low heat. ( You can use white sugar with cider or white wine vinegar. Once, I only had balsamic vinegar and brown sugar. In desperation, I used that and it worked fine, too!)
2. Chop into bite-sized pieces:
   1 large cooking apple
   1 large onion
   1 bay leaf
   1 cinnamon stick
   1 clove of garlic, crushed and minced
   Add these to the warming vinegar and sugar mix.

Start chopping your green tomatoes. Begin with about a pound, and add the chopped tomatoes to the saucepan. Stir as the contents cook down gently. You may well be able to add more depending on the water content of the tomato.  You don’t want a sloppy chutney.

To add zing, finely grate about an inch of fresh ginger root, and add to the chutney mixture. If you like your chutney a bit hotter, then grate in some more. Continue to cook the mixture down.

Here is where your taste buds rule. To add some chili flakes or a dash of chili sauce of not? That is the question. This is entirely up to your and your household’s preference.  The ginger will give you a bit of heat but is generally acceptable to people (children, conservative adults with delicate digestions) who run from chili.

At my house, we add the chili, and stir again.  The chutney will eventually cook down to a sort of jammy consistency.  At this point, you’re nearly ready to prepare to jar (can, for the US audience) the chutney.

While the chutney cooks down, sterilize your jam jars in your preferred method. I like to wash them and then pop them in the oven to dry off at a very low heat.  The jar lids soak in boiling water; lift them out with a wooden spoon and place on clean kitchen paper to gently air dry. Remember that you can get different sized jars.

Also have some jam pot covers or use the jam jar lids as templates to cut out covers from greaseproof paper.

Back to the chutney. Once it has reached the desired consistency, remove the bay leaf and cinnamon stick. Begin to spoon the chutney into the hot jars.  Pop in a jam pot cover of greaseproof paper and put on the lid. Use a wide-mouth funnel if you must.

I recycle my glass canning jars and depending on the size, I need 4-6 jars ready for this size batch.

Refrigerate and use within seven days.

Editor’s Note: If you want to store your chutney over the winter, refer to The Ball Blue Book, The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving or any of our food preservation books for specific directions.