Fruity Mincemeat-like Chutney-Jam

About five years ago, the family cooked up some home-made mincemeat. The process took hours, slowly chopping or cooking the many, many ingredients. That mincemeat ended up being amazing. And since we sealed the jars shut, the mincemeat actually lasted for a couple of years. However, we never really made it again, because it was time-consuming. Luckily, I have a way to speed things up. It’s not mincemeat, not the proper stuff.

Quick-ish Mincemeat-like Chutney-jam

This stuff looks like mincemeat and tastes sweet like mincemeat does. If you have a food processor or blender, it makes everything way, way easier.

Ingredients

2 oranges
1 lemon
approx. 150g sugar (plus more to taste)
125g of dried, sweet fruit. I used sultanas, but you can use raisins, prunes, whatever, as long as it’s sweet and dried.
100g glace cherries
10ml some sort of brown alcohol, e.g. brandy
50g Butter (or any sort of fat)
1 teaspoon Mixed Spices
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Water

Method

Firstly, zest the oranges and lemon, then cut off the hard bits and roughly chop them up, removing seeds as you go along. Throw the zest and chopped fruit into a blender or food processor, and blend it all until it’s all in tiny little bits. You can also chop the fruit by hand, but it’ll take ages. I don’t recommend it.

Put your chopped lemon and orange into a large saucepan and put it on the stove on a medium flame. Add water to cover, then chuck in 150g of sugar. Let it all boil up and mix it all up thoroughly. Once the mixture is boiling, turn the heat down and let the mixture simmer for about 10 minutes, while regularly stirring it.

After those ten minutes, we need to wait for the mixture to cool down, so we can separate the liquid and lumps. A piece of muslin is perfect for the job, but a sieve will do. You want to remove most of the liquid and separate it from the oranges and lemons.

Leave the citrus to drain. We don’t need the liquid from the oranges and lemon, but you can keep it and reduce it – it makes for a nice, sweet, orange sauce, good for things like orange chicken or vanilla ice cream.

Next, either finely chop up the dried fruit and glace cherries, or throw those into a food processor as well. Once chopped up, throw in the dried fruit and cherries into a saucepan (you can use the same one you used for the citrus fruits earlier, if you like) and add the butter and spices. Mix well, and don’t let it burn. Add your alcohol of choice (or skip it if you want) and stir it a bit more. Finally, add the orange and lemon mixture and stir it well, so everything is evenly heated through. If you taste the mincemeat and it’s too bitter, add a little sugar. You probably don’t need this though.

Take the mixture off the stove top, then leave the mixture to cool down.

In the mean time, sterilize some jars by throwing them in an oven for 5 minutes, keeping an eye on them. Wait for everything to cool down, then place your mincemeat into the jars, until it reaches room temperature. After that, you can put it in the fridge for safe keeping.

Well done, you now have something sweet to put into little pastries.

I completely winged this recipe.

I can’t lie, I basically accidentally stumbled into this recipe. Someone had given us a ton of oranges, and I wanted to make something out of them. The original plan was to make orange marmalade, but it didn’t work that well. My second attempt was too watery so I drained it all off. Seeing the mixture as it was, somewhat lumpy without all the juice, it reminded me of mincemeat. So I got some sultanas and cherries, whizzed it all up and, well, ended up with this mincemeat-like stuff.

The nice thing about this recipe though is that you can make it completely vegetarian/vegan by replacing the butter with something else.

Anyway, merry Christmas, everyone. Have a good one!