It’s that time of year again! The nights are drawing in, and any tomatoes still clinging on in the garden or greenhouse are never going to turn red. Tomatoes need warmth to ripen, and once the nights drop below about 10 degrees the ripening slows right down and then stops, so those last green ones are going nowhere.
Don’t throw them away, though: this is Grampa’s green tomato chutney, and the recipe goes back at least 50 years. It’s a brilliant way to use up the end-of-season glut, and if you haven’t quite got enough green tomatoes you can make up the weight with apples.
Grampa’s Green Tomato Chutney
Ingredients
- 1 kg green tomatoes
- 1 kg apples
- 750 g onions roughly chopped in processor
- 750 g demerara sugar
- 250 g sultanas
- 450 ml malt vinegar
- 2 dessertspoons mustard seeds about 15 g
- ¼ tsp ground mace
- ¼ tsp white pepper
- A good pinch of chilli flakes
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 bay leaf
Instructions
- First things first: wash, core, peel and chop the tomatoes and apples, and whizz the onions in the processor until they are roughly chopped.
- Pop the tomatoes, apples and onions into a big pan with the vinegar and simmer, lid off, stirring frequently so it doesn’t catch on the bottom, until the tomatoes are completely soft. This takes a little over an hour, so put the kettle on! A potato masher gives a helping hand: once everything is soft, give it a good squish.
- Add the sugar and stir until it has completely dissolved before you turn up the heat (undissolved sugar sinks to the bottom of the pan and can catch and burn, which would spoil the flavour of the whole batch).
- Stir in the sultanas, spices, chilli, salt and bay leaf and simmer, lid off, for 1–1½ hours, stirring more often towards the end as it thickens. Start checking after 45 minutes.
- In the last 20–30 minutes, have a taste and adjust the salt, pepper and chilli to suit you.
- It’s done when a spoon dragged across the bottom of the pan leaves a clear channel, or when a spoonful on a cold plate shows no watery ring.
- Fish out the bay leaf, then pot the chutney into hot, sterilised 180 ml jars with vinegar-proof lids.
Notes
Yield: about 10 jars of 180 ml, so sterilise 12 to be safe.
Maturing: be patient and leave it for at least 4 weeks before eating, because straight from the pan it will taste raw and very sharp. The vinegar and spices need time to mellow and blend into the fruit, and over the weeks the acidity softens and the flavours come together. It is worth the wait!
