Tomato & Red Onion Chutney

I've only started looking into chutney recipes recently when I got it into my head that i'm going to make everyone a jar of chutney for Christmas. So rather than going a bit gung-ho a week before Christmas and end up making a right pigs ear of things, I thought having a bit of practice would probably be the best and the most sensible idea!

I had a trawl through recipes and - seeing that I had a ton of tomatoes that i'd grown kicking about - I decided on a tomato-based recipe. However, most of them had a few different ingredients like cardomom seeds and chilli that I just wasn't into in a big way. So I concocted my own recipe using the base of red wine vinegar, brown sugar and tomatoes and kind of just added anything that I could find!

This does take quite a bit of preparation so make sure you have plenty of time to do this!

I do hope that you try and enjoy this recipe as I think I actually done really well considering this is my first attempt!

This makes about two standard jam-sized jars, however you can increase or decrease the ingredients accordingly :)

2 medium red onions
750kg tomatoes
1 or 2 peppers
4 garlic cloves (crushed and chopped finely)
half teaspoon of ground ginger
1 teaspoon of dijon mustard
250g light brown muscovado sugar
1 braeburn apple (or any type of cooking apple)
150ml red wine vinegar

First of all peel and deseed your tomatoes and peppers. To peel them, plunge the tomatoes and pepper into boiling water for about 30 seconds, drain then fill with icy cold water. This makes is so much easier to peel them! Cut into quarters and remove the seeds (WARNING! Your hands will actually stink of tomatoes afterwards!)

Dice the apple and onion into small bits and slice the tomatoes and the peppers.

Add all the ingredient to a stainless steel pan (not brass or copper as it reacts with the the vinegar and leaves a metallic taste apparently) and bring to the boil stirring occasionally. Once boiling, reduce to a medium heat and simmer for about an hour.

In this time you can sterilise the jars. There is a few ways which you can do this:

  - Wash the jars in hot soapy water and rinse thoroughly. Shake off any excess water and place in the oven on a LOW HEAT for about ten minutes or until dry.

  - Place in a saucepan of cold water and bring to the boil. Once the water is boiling, boil for about ten minutes.

  - Or simple place in the dishwasher and fire it on a warm rinse (this is the method I chose!)

You should do this so the jars are just done and warm for when your chutney is ready.

So after the hour, the chutney should be looking a lot darker in colour and have a jam-like consistency. Like this...

It will reduce dramatically as all the ingredients sort of mush together. I left it on a low heat and stirred for about five more minutes just to make sure it was cooked properly.

I then placed into the warm jars and covered in kitchen paper until cooled. If you place the lids on right away, the condensation will settle on top of the chutney and make for a runny consistency.

This keeps for about 6 weeks.

So there you go! Some yummy chutney to make, right on time for this freeeeezing weather! It goes amazing with hard cheese and oatcakes. You could also mix up the vegetables and add or take away certain ingredients.

For hints and tips a great website to visit is here as it gives you ideas on how to prepare certain fruits or vegetables for the chutney and also whats a complete no-go for it!