Pomegranate Apple Butter

As many of my family and friends know I failed miserably at making pear butter in my crock pot and gave up trying. My success with the Peach Honey butter in a regular stainless steel pot gave me hope that I would have some "butters" in my future.

A few weeks past I was blessed to be able to go to a family friends house and be able to pick as many pomegranates, lemons, and avocados that I could carry. I have been using the lemons and drying them for my sister since she loves them so much, enjoying the avos in my salads, but the poms were sitting there staring at me.

I decided to juice the poms and use it later to make something... but what. I needed to give an apple butter a try, but not the traditional one with the vinegar. I decided that I would use the apples, Jonathon's that I purchased for something else, to make a large batch of Pomegranate Apple Butter. Another thing that I found displeasing was the consistency that I got the last time that I did apple butter. It was grainy and tart and turned me off. This time using a different variety of apple I got the silky and amazing texture that I think butters should taste like. Here is my PomApple Butter.

PomApple Butter
4 lbs of Jonathon apples
2 cups fresh squeezed Pomegranate juice (Pom juice from store can be subbed out)
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup bottled lemon juice

Preparation : Prepare 7 half pints , lids, and rings. Sterilize the jars and keep them in the hot water till its time for processing. Make sure to fill your water bath canner and get the water to a simmer.

Cooking: In a medium stainless steel pot add the apples peeled and chunked and cook them down till they are easy to mash, about 30 minutes. Add the pomegranate juice and sugar and continue to cook on low heat, stirring often for 45 minutes.  If you still have chunks to your apples you can use an immersion blender or put the contents into a blender until the mixture is silky smooth. Add the bottled lemon juice to preserve the color. Continue to cook for about 15 minutes, till the consistency mounds on your spoon. Remove from the heat and ladle into your jars.
Filling the jars:  On a dishtowel place your hot jars and using your funnel in each jar using a ladle then fill the jars leaving 1/4” headspace.  Remove air bubbles and refill to ¼” headspace. Taking a clean papertowel wet it with warm water and wipe the rims of the jars removing any food particles that would interfere with a good seal. Using your magic wand extract the lids from the hot water and place them on the now cleaned rims. Add your rings to the tops of each of the jars and turn to seal just "finger tight". 

Processing: Make sure your rack is on the bottom of the canner and place the jars in the water bath making sure that the water covers each of the jars by 1 to 2 inches. Add hot water to the canner if it doesn't measure up. Cover the pot and turn up the heat under the canner and wait for the water to start boiling. Once the water has come to a boil start your timer for 10 minutes. When complete turn off the heat and remove the cover and let the jars sit for another few minutes. Remove the jars and place them back on the dishtowel in a place that they will sit overnight to cool. Do not touch or move them till the next morning.

Sealing: Some time in the next hour your jars will be making a "pinging" or "popping" noise. That is the glass cooling and the reaction of the lids being sucked into the jar for proper sealing. Some recipes may take overnight to seal. Check your lids and reprocess any jars that did not seal.