Tangy, spicy and sweet a chutney can be made in the pressure cooker in just minutes.
We’ve pressure cooked marmalade and hot sauce – so when my jar of mango chutney was running low and mangoes magically appeared at my mostly local fruit and veggie peddler, I jumped at the chance to make my own.
Why?!?
Chutneys can be used for zazzing-up Indian-style curries or dal, but their tang works just as well on any meat (especially the really strong- flavored lamb or game) and it’ll do wonders on a cheese platter with strong flavored goat or aged brie-type cheeses. Here are a few more ideas for using chutney.
How?!?
My Sharwood’s Mango Chutney ingredient list was un-informative, to say the least:
Ingredients: Sugar, Mangoes (41%), Salt, Acetic Acid, and spices (0.5%)
I replaced some of the sugar with dried fruit and added an apple to make sure the mix would gel into jam-consistency. If I had used more sugar my chutney it would have more transparent, and closer to it’s commercial inspiration (and I could have forgone the apple as well). Acetic Acid is a fancy name for vinegar, BTW. There’s no mention of it in the ingredient list, but my chutney definitely had pieces of something from the allium family so I went with the middle-ground between garlic and onions: shallots.
I let my taste buds and a few Google searches guide me as to which spices to use and then bloomed them in oil before the pressure cooking step.
There are endless variations of chutneys that can be made with a rainbow of fruits – but they all contain sugar, vinegar, salt and optionally heat (and not just from red peppers but mustard seeds, ginger, black or white pepper also work).
| Pressure Cooker | Accessories | Pr. Cook Time | Pr. Level | Open |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 L or larger | none | 5 min. | High(2) | Natural |
(per serving)
- Serves: 48
- Serving size: 1 Tablespoon
- Calories: 78.2
- TOTAL Fat: 0.3g
- TOTAL Carbs: 18.3g
- Sugar Carbs: 9.3g
- Sodium: 99.3mg
- Fiber Carbs: 1.0g
- Protein: 0.9g
- Cholesterol: 0.0mg
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 1 shallot, chopped
- 2 tablespoons fresh ginger, finely diced
- ¼ teaspoon cardamom powder
- ⅛ teaspoon cinnamon
- 2 fresh red hot chili , finely chopped (or ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes)
- 2 large mangoes, diced
- 1 apple, cored and diced (skin-on)
- ¼ cup raisins
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 1¼ cups raw (demarara) sugar
- 1¼ cups apple cider vinegar (or 1 cup white wine vinegar)
- To the pre-heated pressure cooker add the vegetable oil, shallots and ginger and saute until the shallots begin to soften.
- Add the cardamom, cinnamon and hot peppers and saute for about a minute to fry and bloom the spice powders.
- Add the remaining ingredients to the pressure cooker and mix well until all of the sugar has melted.
- Close and lock the lid of the pressure cooker. Turn the heat up to high and when the cooker reaches pressure, lower to the heat to the minimum required by the cooker to maintain pressure. Cook for 5-7 minutes at high pressure.
- When time is up, open the pressure cooker with the Natural release method - move the cooker off the burner and wait for the pressure to come down on its own (about 10 minutes). For electric pressure cookers, disengage the “keep warm” mode or unplug the cooker and open when the pressure indicator has gone down (20 to 30 minutes).
- Simmer the un-covered pressure cooker on medium heat (saute or brown mode for electric pressure cookers) until the contents are a jammy consistency - you can drag the spoon across the base and see it (about 15 minutes).
- Stir occasionally, at first, and then as the mixture gets thicker you will want to turn down the heat and stir more, and stir more frequently. For electric cookers, to turn down the heat from the Brown/Saute mode simply switch to the "keep warm" mode - if your electric cooker does not turn the brown/saute" mode on and off intermittently to keep the contents from burning.
- Spoon piping hot chutney into clean jars and close tightly.
- When cooled refrigerate for up to a month or transfer to freezer-safe containers to freeze up to a year.
Yields about 2 cups.
Laura, what do you feel the role of all that sugar is? Just taste? (You’re advising to refrigerate or freeze, plus using a fair bit of vinegar, so I’m guessing the sugar role isn’t necessarily preservation.)
Randal, yes the sugar is both for taste to to assist in the “gelling” – all jams and jellies use both pectin and sugar to get their particular consistency.
The preservation comes from the vinegar, and if processed correctly in a hot water bath canner, this chutney could be shelf stable.
See also:
Preservation Principles of Chutney
http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can_06/chutney_principles.html
Mango Chutney Recipe from the National Center for Home Food Preservation
http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can_06/mango_chutney.html
Ciao,
L
Thanks Laura… you say in the write-up that you cut back on the sugar… so do you feel that you cut back just to the point where the chemical magic would have been affected, and stopped there…?
(background: I’m a Weight Watchers for Men member, and am very aware of how those lil dollops of chutney can eat up my daily points lol, so I’m always looking for ways to cheat and save points…..I was thinking stevia and bottled liquid pectin… in terms of the set…. food safety preservation being take care of by the vinegar / refrigeration….)
thanks for the links, always interested in authoritative reading!
I’m sure there must be a certain ratio of sugars that jams need to gel, but I don’t know what it is. What would be easier for your situation, is to leave the sugar and its substitutes out and add a no-sugar pectin. That way you get the set without any worries of sugar, ratios and such!
Ciao,
L
Oh, there is such a thing? Kewl. Thanks for the tip, will look for it! You rock, Laura! I recommend you to everyone!
Here’s a no-sugar-needed pectin:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004U8R0QA/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004U8R0QA&linkCode=as2&tag=vi
I would do a small batch with it first to see how it tastes. The Italian no-sugar needed pectin contains lots of citric acid (for preservation) so if that’s the case with this American no-sugar pectin you’ll want to reduce the vinegar.
Ciao and thanks for the recommendations!
L
YUM! This looks great and I appreciate the tutorial on cutting a mango – I was doing it this weekend and it looked like I chewed it with my teeth! :) Seriously great post and I am pinning!
Oh, great! I found out this works with pineapples, too. At least the ones you eat and not cook with (those you still have to peel with a knife). Just quarter the pineapple vertically, and then slice the quarter wedge in slits to form pineapple triangles with a skin “handle” like a melon wedge!
Ciao,
L
Thank you SO MUCH for this, Laura. I have been looking for a way to duplicate Sharwoods’ Major Grey chutney forever. Every recipe I tried until now had way too many ingredients and was a major disappointment.
We are not fond of raisins here so when you wrote that you added them for extra sweetness, the penny dropped. Instead of raisins, I added an equivalent measure of dried mango chopped into currant-size pieces with a pair of scissors. Voila! It may not be an exact duplicate of Major Grey’s, but we love this every bit as much. I made my second batch this morning and processed it for shelf storage. I plan never to be without again.
I love your idea of swapping raisins with dried mango for this. I’m so glad you had success with the recipe and like the results. I think the real trick to getting a good chutney is to balance the sweet, acid and spicy but without loosing the fruit’s own flavor.
My cooking philosophy is to try and get the job done with as few ingredients as possible- not only does gathering the ingredients take more time but more ingredients do not mean more flavor (they usually just muddy-up the recipe).
Ciao,
L
P.S. If you wanted to leave-out dried fruit, altogether, you can omit it along with the apple and then up the sugar to two cups.
Could I replace the shallot with minced onion? Have all the ingredients but shallots.
Onions should be fine, go for it!
Ciao,
L
This was delicious and oh so easy to make. Thanks for sharing.
I make this all the time. It’s delicious. Thank you for the recipe. Can I preserve this in Mason jars by using a water bath?
Pomona’s Pectin is available pretty well everywhere, and if you use that, you don’t need sugar, you can use sugar alternatives like honey, xylitol (from birch trees), agave, or any other sweetener. Because it is pure pectin it brings out the flavor of whatever fruit you are using. Each box contains two packets, one of the pectin powder, and one of powdered calcium, both of which you use in small amounts – the calcium is mixed with water to make “calcium water” and the calcium is what causes the gelling when it’s combined with the pure pectin. The calcium water keeps in the fridge for a couple weeks. One box goes a long way. I wish I had discovered it years ago! I started using it last year, and it is amazing. They have lots of recipes on their site, too.