The welcome glut of autumn

By late September, most British gardeners with a mature apple tree are eyeing the grass beneath it with a mixture of gratitude and mild dread. The windfalls come thick and fast, and if you leave them, the wasps move in. The good news is that a bruised, nobbly, slightly pecked apple is not a waste — it is the ideal raw material for the preserving pan.

Windfalls do not keep. They bruise further, soften, and rot within days, which rules them out of the apple store. But chop them up with onions, vinegar, sugar and spice and you have chutney; cook them down gently with a little sugar and you have sauce. Both will sit in a cool cupboard for a year or more, and both taste far better than anything you can buy.

Sorting, washing and preparing the fruit

Start with a strict sort. This is the one stage where a little ruthlessness pays off, because one bad apple really will taint a whole pan.

• Discard anything mouldy, oozing brown liquid, or smelling of cider vinegar gone too far.
• Trim away bruises, wasp damage, scabby patches and the brown frass trails of codling moth. Small defects are fine once cut out.
• Wash in cold water, changing it if the fruit is muddy, and drain well.
• For chutney, peel and core roughly — you can leave skin and core on if you will sieve the finished chutney.
• For sauce, peel and core properly, or cook and then pass through a mouli or sieve.

Bramleys are the backbone of British preserving: high in acid, low in sugar, and they collapse into a soft pulp with almost no effort. Add a proportion of Cox's Orange Pippin, Egremont Russet or Discovery for aroma, and the finished jars will taste noticeably rounder.

A reliable apple chutney

For every 2kg of prepared fruit, use 500g onions, 250g raisins or sultanas, 500g demerara sugar and 600ml vinegar — malt vinegar for a traditional tang, cider vinegar for something softer. Add 2 tsp yellow mustard seed, 1 tsp ground ginger, 1 tsp allspice, ½ tsp ground cloves, a dried chilli, and 25g grated fresh root ginger tied into a spice bag or muslin square.

Salt the chopped onions in a colander for half an hour, then rinse — it takes the raw edge off. Tip everything into a heavy-based preserving pan, bring slowly to a simmer, then cook uncovered for 1½ to 2 hours, stirring often, especially as it thickens. The chutney is ready when a spoon drawn across the base leaves a clean channel behind it and no vinegar pools in the gap. It should be glossy and jammy, not watery.

If you use less sugar, the chutney will be sharper and shorter-keeping; the quantities above are a sensible balance for long storage.

Apple sauce, plain and spiced

Sauce is quicker and lighter. Take 1.5kg of peeled, cored, sliced apples, add 100ml water, the juice of half a lemon, 75–100g sugar and a cinnamon stick with two or three cloves. Cook gently for 15–20 minutes until the fruit collapses completely, then remove the spices and beat smooth with a wooden spoon, a potato masher, or a stick blender for a purée.

For a deeper, more old-fashioned sauce, keep cooking until it darkens and thickens to a spoonable butter — lovely with cold pork or stirred through morning porridge. A pinch of nutmeg or a scrap of star anise works well if you are bottling in autumn and want a warming edge.

Sterilising and sealing your jars

Clean jars matter more than any recipe. Wash them in hot soapy water, rinse, and stand them upside down to drain.

• Oven method: place clean, dry jars and their lids on a baking tray and heat at 140°C (120°C fan, Gas 1) for 20 minutes. Fill while still hot.
• Dishwasher method: run on the hottest cycle and fill straight from the machine.
• Fill to within 5mm of the rim, run a knife or skewer around the inside to release trapped air, and seal immediately.
• For extra assurance with chutney, stand the sealed jars in a deep pan of water, bring to a gentle boil, and process for 15 minutes.

Leave the jars undisturbed for 24 hours. The lids should pull down into a slight concave dip — that hollow click when you press the centre is the vacuum telling you the seal has taken.

Maturing, labelling and using your jars

Apple sauce is ready at once and keeps for a fortnight in the fridge once opened, or for months if frozen in tubs. Chutney needs patience: hide it away for at least four to six weeks, ideally three months, by which time the vinegar will have mellowed and the spices will have married into the fruit.

Label every jar with the contents and the date, and store in a cool, dark cupboard. Then enjoy the rewards — a spoonful of chutney with mature cheddar, cold ham or a pork pie, or as a glaze for roast gammon. Apple sauce belongs beside roast pork, sausages and mash, or folded through yoghurt with a handful of toasted oats. Either way, a few hours at the preserving pan in October pays you back all winter.