Recipe help! I think i've been doing it wrong.

[zisforzebra]

When following a recipe which calls for fruit/vegetable to be peeled, do you weigh the fruit/veg before or after?

I made chutney yesterday which called for 1.4kg of cooking apples. I peeled and cored and then weighed them. I thought afterwards that maybe I should have weighed them before the peeling etc. I could barely get them in the pan and it took way longer than expected to cook and thicken.

I've made loads of chutney and this has only just occurred to me!

IME, if it is a weight cored and peeled, then it normally states that. So if it doesn't say ie in the ingreds list it says 1.4kg cooking apples and then in instructions tells you to core and peel then the 1.4kg is before coring and peeling.

If in the ingreds list it says 1.4g cooking apples, cored and peeled then its the weight once that has been done.

Chutney always takes longer than it says in the recipes, IME.

I don't imagine it's too critical in chutney. I normally just chuck anything we have a glut of in a pan with vinegar, sugar and spices and cook till you can part it in the pan...and call it chutney!

I think taffeta's right. How could you be expected to know how many apples to get otherwise? I guess if it was something where that particular quantity was super important they would specify.

Thanks both. Good point about the knowing how many to get Moon. I didn't think of that as we have an apple tree so I just kept nipping outside and picking them until I had enough!

The upside is that I now have an entire cupboard full of chutney!