Green Tomato Chutney – Using your Harvest

There’s nothing quite like eating your own fruit & veg that you have grown and just picked from the garden, and an extension of that is to be able to substitute homemade jams & chutney for shop bought products.

With our crop of home grown tomatoes we made chutneys & relishes, soups & sauces as well as freezing some chopped to give us more scope on using them later. Towards the end of the season we did end up with quite a few green tomatoes which were slow to ripen so this recipe for Green Tomato Chutney came in quite handy...

Depending on how many jars you want or how many tomatoes you have, you can scale up the amounts accordingly to suit.

MAKES 1 x 500g jar.

400kg of green tomatoes

125g chopped Onions

100g of chopped / peeled / cored cooking Apples

40g Raisins

100g brown sugar

125ml white vinegar

5g fresh root ginger

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon mixed spice

1.       Dissolve the sugar with the vinegar in a large pan over gentle heat.

2.       Chop the tomatoes and add to the pan with all of the other ingredients

3.       Bring the contents to the boil and then simmer for about 1½ hrs. until its thick

4.       Ladle into sterilised jars and seal with airtight lid immediately. Make sure both lids and jars are sterilised by either heating them in oven / microwave or by using a solution such as Milton.

5.       Allow jars to cool before applying labels.

6.       For best results leave chutney to mature for about a month before using it, in a cool dark place. Will keep for a year unopened, but once you start to use it store in the fridge and use within   3-4 weeks.

Untill the next time - Happy Gardening & Good Cooking !