Jonah's Apple Butter

My son is a talented and passionate chef. He's currently pursuing a doctorate at Oxford, but prior to his shipping out, he visited the farmers market with me and we bought a variety of apples from Red Jacket Orchards (those gorgeous apples at the top of the blog) and he turned them into an amazing batch of apple butter. He agreed to sharing the recipe and here it is! Thanks, Jonah!

Apple Butter 
Recipe by Jonah Rosenberg -  adapted from the Joy of Cooking

The inspiration for making apple butter came in the form of a plywood basket of apples, picked way out in Suffolk County and looking reproachful on the dining room table. At first I was tentative, using only four sad-looking specimens. The reaction to the finished product was so good that I’ve doubled my assault, using eight fine apples, this time from Red Jacket Orchards.
The recipe requires tender loving care and little else, but it will make your house smell like a Norman Rockwell painting should, warm and enticing. If you make enough (read: use your biggest pot), you can jar it and give it as gifts to people over the next several months, which is handy indeed. If this sounds too Martha Stewart to you, then just think of it as a cheap and useful version of flowers.

Eight apples* (about 4 lb.) of as many varieties as you can find
1 liter of apple cider*
Around 5 cups of sugar (see note)

Halve the apples, pull out the stem and cut each half into thirds.

Put the segments into a large saucepan or stockpot and pour the apple cider over them. It should not quite cover them – if you want to add more liquid, put in a little water.

Cook the apples uncovered over medium heat for 30 minutes or until the segments start to break up in the cider.

Take the pot off of the stove and pass the apples and the cider, ladle by ladle, through a sieve or a food mill (which is what I use here; make sure to reverse the blade every now and again to clear the screen).

Now you have apple sauce; the JoC volunteers that you might start with store-bought apple sauce at this point. At this I frown.

Measure the pulp in a mixing cup and add ½ cup of sugar for every cup of purée. For my eight apples I got 10 cups, and so I added 5 cups of sugar. I know it seems like a lot, but resist the urge to scale back – for two reasons. The first is that the sugar acts as a thickener; it combines with the liquid to create a thick syrup, which condenses as you cook it. The second is that as sugar cooks, it tastes less sweet and more complex – think caramel. Heat reorganizes the sugar crystals to form all sorts of nutty-tasting compounds.

Mix the sugar with the pulp and place back on the flame at medium-low heat, and cook for… ever. This (along with passing the apples through the sieve) is the labor of love part; this needs to reduce and thicken for quite some time – maybe four hours.