We have a massive bag of foraged apples to process, and we went blackberry picking today. I managed to squeeze one bag of blackberries into the freezer, but had lots left. Water bathing blackberry and apple compote seems the sensible solution until I can make more room in my freezer. I don’t want to miss the blackberry season.
Blackberries are my 😍 fruit and they are so full of goodness. We mainly use them during the winter to make our weekly compote, or for pies and crumbles. This bottled compote could be used as a pie filling or in a crumble. I have watched it done on YouTube and so thought that I have nothing to lose but a bit of sugar. The rest of the ingredients were foraged for free.
I am not putting any weights into the recipe. It depends how much you have and how much that you want to make. If making a small batch of compote I will use 3 apples to a cup full of blackberries. A random amount of fruit was just thrown together today. I measured by eye. There were a lot more apples to blackberries.
Basically compote is just fruit, a spash of water, and a sweetener. I usually sweeten compote with honey but I used granulated sugar today as I want the jars of compote to preserve throughout the winter. My apples were cooking apples. If I am making compote with eating apples, I don’t always need any sweetener. This time I felt I needed it with waterbathing. I am not an expert in canning, but this is what I did.
Wild apples tend to go brown not long after being chopped. We therefore peeled the apples and put them in a big bowl of water as we were taking the skin off. The brambles were soaking in salt water to get rid of the bugs, and were then rinsed. As soon as all of the apples were peeled, we diced them small. To stop the apples going brown, dipping them in lemon works, but we just chopped them quickly. We cut them so small so that the blackberries and apples can both be started off in the pan together. Apple takes longer to cook if cut in larger chunks.
To make the compote, put all of the fruit into the pan together with 3 tablespoon of water, and cook on a gentle heat. When it has started to soften add sugar to taste. Cook gently for a few more minutes. I actually had 3 pans of the compote on the go at the same time as I couldn’t be bothered to get the steps out to get my big jam pot down.
I warmed and sterilised my jars by filling them up with boiling water and sterilised the lids in a pan of water. I used large jars and so only 7 fitted into my big pan that I water bathe in. I always sterilise my ladle and funnel as well. I filled the jars with the hot compote, cleaned the rims, and put the lids on and screwed on the rings until they were finger tight.
I had poured the hot water from the jars into the big pan that had a trivet at the bottom, and then put my jars in when filled. A tea towel can be used at the bottom of the pan if there is no trivet available. I then topped up the pan with hot water until it was 2 inches above the jars. The water was brought to a rolling boil and the jars of compote were water bathed for 30 minutes from then.
After 30 minutes the heat was turned off and the jars left to stand in the pan for 10 minutes before being removed to stand on a wooden board. The jars will be left for 12 to 24 hours before moving. I always leave overnight and check the lids in the morning, and put any in the fridge that haven’t sealed. We could hear them pinging as they sealed and this batch was successful when checked.
I store them in a cool dark cupboard. Some people say to store them without the rings on, but I would lose them if I did that.😊. I just leave them on loosely and check the seal before eating.
We had lots of compote left and so I put it into a glass container in the fridge. We eat some kind of compote every day and it lasts about 5 days in the fridge in glass containers (but I have stored it longer). Below are a couple of links that talk about how we use compote to improve our menu.
16 Uses for fruit compote or stewed fruit
Making different compotes and how they frugally add joy to our diet.
Thanks for this Toni. Really useful.
No worries.
Thank you this really explains in straightforward terms what you need to do
Glad it helps
great way to preserve fruit Toni – thank you for sharing!
No worries
One year when I had so many apples and didn’t want to waste any I’d used all my sweeteners of any kind and wondered what to do. I cooked the chopped apples to a soft pulp. This went into hot sterile jam jars, was sealed, checked when cold for the seal to have depressed. It was so successful that the jar left at the back of the dark cupboard was still good almost two years later. No water baths or sugar!
Brilliant. Thanks for sharing.
That’s brilliant. I had always wondered about water bathing. I have such a small freezer that I can’t store much and don’t want to make jam because of the sugar. Hopefully this year we can have apple throughout the winter.
No worries. Good luck.
I’ve never been brave enough to try canning . This might help me get there . 👍x
I hope so. It took me a few years to get up the nerve as well. I was worried about loosing all my tomatoes. It was easier than I thought.
Brilliant post, thanks Toni. But to clarify, are special jars needed for this process? I’m assuming you can’t use 2nd hand jam jars etc?
Some people do use jars l8ke that but I am a newbie and got some jars as presents last year. I have reused some of these mason jars and lids and they have worked ok.