Some time ago when in Manchester I was tempted into buying a large box of fresh mangoes. I paid  just £3 for a beautifully packaged box of seven small ripe mangoes, complete with tissue paper wrapping and tinsel decoration. When I got home I froze them planning to make mango chutney.

Mango chutney is not something I've tried to make before, although we consume enough of it as we tend to have a curry night every few weeks.
There's a good selection of recipes on the internet, including a sweet version with raisins on bestrecipes.com.au, and one with lots of chillies at top-indian-recipes.com. One problem I ran into, which also happened when looking for lime pickle recipes, was that the Indian use of the word chutney tends to refer to preparations of fresh ingredients rather than a method of preserving.

In the end I played safe and adapted a recipe from the WI Book of Preserves, which appealed as it contained a nice selection of spices.
After defrosting my mangoes I discovered that they'd probably been in the freezer a bit long, or else they were riper than I remembered  as they were looking a bit soft and juicy, as a result I missed out the part of the recipe which involved chopping the fruit into small chunks.

See here for the mango chutney recipe.

Recipe Costs

£3.00 1.8kg mangos (about 3 large ones)
£0.65 350g soft brown sugar
£0.03 1/2 tsp cumin seeds
£0.25 1 tsp coriander seeds
£0.03 1 tsp mustard seeds
£0.10 1 chilli
£0.02 1/2 tsp ground turmeric
£0.50 50g fresh ginger
£0.30 400ml malt vinegar
£0.15 4 cloves garlic
£0.16 1 onion
£5.19 Total
£2.88 per kg of chutney (73% of the cost of Sharwards mango chutney at tesco)

The first step was to remove the flesh from the mangoes and add sugar.

The whole spices are toasted in a dry pan and then...

... mixed with the turmeric and ground in a pestle and morter.

I did the same with the garlic and some rock salt, grinding it into a paste.

Finely chopped garlic and half a red chilli, I don't want this chutney to be too hot.

I used home made spiced pickling vinegar which will hopefully add some extra depth to the chutney.

All the ingredients are put in the preserving pan along with the finely chopped onion.

Slightly under 3 hours later the chutney was thick enough to pot up, the colour and consistency look good and the first sneaky taste suggests I was right to hold back a bit on the chilli.

Recipe Timings

30 mins preparation
3 hrs cooking
15 mins potting

Taste Test

This will have to wait a few weeks.