Green Tomato Mock Mincemeat

This recipe is loosely based upon one found at allrecipes.com. I am going to tell it to you the way that I made it.

Ingredients

6 cups chopped green tomatoes

6 cups chopped tart green apples

3 cups brown sugar

1-1/2 cups dried cranberries (Craisins)

1/2 cup cider vinegar

3 Tbsp. butter

3 tsp. ground cinnamon

1-1/2 tsp. salt

3/4 tsp. ground nutmeg

3/4 tsp. ground cloves

This will make 2 quarts of filling. 1-1/2 quarts of filling are required to make one pie, so you’ll have a pint left over — just saying. You’ll need to make a plan ahead of time on how to do this. As you can see, I put my filling into 2 pint jars and 1 quart jar. My mother wanted a little bit of filling and so I gave her one pint and then I made a pie with the remainder. If you make pie, you’ll need pastry for a 9″ double crust pie. I’m not sure what my mother did with her filling, but I think it would be good in fried pies or filled cookies. Note: 2 pints = 1 quart.

Method

Stir all the ingredients together in a very large pan. Cook and stir over medium-low heat until thick and bubbly and reduced in volume a bit, at least 25 minutes. Remove from heat and ladle into jars. At this point I put lids on, let the jars cool, and put them into my refrigerator. I kept the filling refrigerated until I used it a couple weeks later.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Prepare bottom crust in a 9″ pie pan. Pour 1-1/2 quarts filling into pie crust. Cover with top crust, cut vents in, crimp the edges. Bake on lowest oven rack for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 375 degrees and bake an additional 20-25 minutes until golden and filling bubbles.

This filled my home with a wonderful aroma. I wish now that I had properly canned the filling to use this winter, but I was busy at the time and simply put lids on and popped them into the refrigerator. That meant it should be used sooner rather than later.

Note 9/30/2018 . . . A lot of people are looking at this recipe. I made this again yesterday and used the water-bath canning process for three pint jars. I processed for ten minutes. A lot of consideration was given to freezing it, but that’s something that would tend to get lost in my freezer, so I decided to can it instead. It looks and tastes amazing! Last night I was watching The Great British Baking Show on Netflix and saw them baking Rum Nicky. I may stir a couple tablespoons of rum into the Mock Mincemeat before baking it into a small pie next time. Sounds so yummy.