A comment I always remember when making chutney (altho I have forgotten where I read it) says that the art of a good chutney is long slow cooking, so I was quite surprised to read the 30 minutes cooking time in one of the recipes.

However, I often (when I have time) read through all the old comments on Fn's blog and some go back to 2007! and have frequently noticed comments saying that their chutney was thickened up after only........usually a very short space of time. This puzzled me as mine always take so much longer and then I have to watch it like a hawk in the last half hour as it seems to stick very quickly if I dont hover and stir frequently.

Amazes me how we all start off with the same (or similar) ingredients and recipe and how many different mixes evolve along the way.

I have recently started using my slow cooker to do the long slow cook and then I transfer it to my maslin pan for the last hour. This saves so much time hovering and stirring which I can't resist doing whenever that glorious fruity smell invades the kitchen.

I'm looking for a chutney recipe to use up eating apples that will be nice and sweet and full of flavour - a bit like a mango chutney, to have with curries. This may not be possible with just apples I guess. I do have a bag of dried organic apricots as well to use so off to have another trawl on the internet.

Thanks Hattie, I'll give that a go. I wasn't too sure about leaving lid off the slow cooker and thats why I transferred it to the maslin pan but if it works for you then thats good enough for me.

I'll let you know how it works out.

p.s. that recipe is one of the ones I highlighted in OP. It claims to only take 30 mins!

however - the ingredients are suitable for what I'm looking for so will ignore the timing and see how long it takes in slow cooker.