Pickle Club: Chipotle Chutney
When we were down in Tas at Christmas we visited Seb’s amazing-chef-cousin Jamison. In amongst his pantry (hands-down the most amazing pantry anyone could ever wish for) was a whopping 1kg bag of dried chipotle chillies. Once dried, they’re super light, so he hadn’t anticipated just how large a 1kg bag full of dried chillies actually was! Much to our excitement, he happily gave us a decent bag full and Seb immediately came up with the idea of Chipotle Chutney! What a clever clogs.
As I mentioned last week – we bought LOADS of tomatoes at the Queen Vic market to make the chutney. The man at the stall was pretty keen to get rid of two whole boxes (about 25kg’s), so he gave us the lot for $10 – a huge bargain we couldn’t pass up. Needless to say, but we had plenty of tomatoes left over… so we got straight to work on a literal bucket-load of delicious homemade passata. We managed to peel all 25kgs pretty quickly (albeit some sore digits afterwards), but we’ve now got bottles and bottles full of the stuff; all ready for the cold winter months ahead. If you haven’t done so already, quickly head to your local market (if you live in the southern hemisphere) and buy up any tomatoes for either an awesome chutney or passata – your winter self will love you for it!
x e.
Chipotle Chutney
3 kgs tomatoes
6-8 Granny Smith apples peeled, cored and cut into eighths
2 dried chipotle chilli whole
a few good splashes of Worstershire sauce
1/2 cup sugar
splash of apple cider vinegar
2 tsp smoked paprika
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp coriander
1 tsp chilli powder
1 tbsp mustard powder
4 garlic cloves
salt to taste
pepper to taste
1. Add apples and tomatoes to a large pan on medium heat. Squish the tomatoes down to release all their liquid.
2. Soak chipotles in water for about 20 minutes (this will reduce their bitterness). Then blitz the chipotles and add to the pot along with the rest of the ingredients and season to taste.
3. Keep on the stove cooking away for about 3 hours to let it reduce to a nice consistency, stirring as you go.
4. When your chutney is almost ready, you’ll need to sterilize the jars. To do this you’ll need to heat the oven to 180ºC. Wash jars and lids in hot soapy water and rinse well. Place all jars on an oven tray facing up and not touching each other and pop them in the oven for 20 minutes. After this time, take them out of the oven and let cool to the same temperature as the chutney. Never add cold chutney to hot jars or vice versa!
