This was a nice quick easy recipe to make to use up the last of the gooseberries.
I only made about half of quantity of the recipe, as the gooseberries in the garden were rapidly being eaten by wasps, and I'd used up a lot making a delicious summer pudding using only gooseberries - highly recommended, if a bit pale looking.

This meant it was quite a quick process as it cut down the time consuming job of topping and tailing the gooseberries. The recipe also appealed as I thought it would be nice to try a chutney without all the additions such as raisins, dates, chilli etc.

The recipe I used was adapted from the one at gooseberryrecipes.org.

  See here for the gooseberry chutney recipe.

Recipe Costs

£0.85 650g gooseberries (equivalent cost, mine was free)
£0.09 125g onion
£0.36 285ml vinegar (malt)
£ 0.01 7g salt
£0.46 250g brown sugar
£0.03 1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
£0.01 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
£1.81 Total (£0.96 without buying the gooseberries)
£2.87 per kg of jam (£1.52 without buying the gooseberries - 18% of the cost of equivalent at tesco)

The simplest of ingredients to start with, top and tailed gooseberries and onion.

Sugar, salt and ginger and cayenne pepper to give it a bit of a spicy taste.

Cheap and cheerful malt vinegar, I did consider using the more expensive cider vinegar but frugality won in the end (I'm a cheapskate at heart). I find a glass  measuring jug very useful for liquid ingredients when preserving.

Cooking the  gooseberries and simmering to reduce down to a chutney consistency didn't take long at all. The picture below is at the start of the process, before the gooseberries underwent their colour change.

The finished product looked  surprisingly similar to the gooseberry jam I recently made, the colour is the same and the distinctive seeds occur in both. The skins of the gooseberries seem to break down so much that they are not noticeable, which is a relief as I wouldn't fancy skinning them as well as top and tailing.

Recipe Timings

30 mins preparation
30 mins simmering
15 mins potting