This Fresh Cherry Tomato Chutney is a light take on the traditional accompaniment. It still keeps well and has that distinctive sweet and sour kick, but with a burst of freshness that’s perfect for summer. Using ripe and sweet cherry tomatoes keeps preparation simple while giving the chutney a wonderful texture.
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As I am increasingly inclined to do, I’ve kept this recipe very plain and simple without lots of spices or other additions. This allows the fresh tomato flavour to really sing. But it also allows you to include any additional flavours that you wish. I’ve included some of my favourite suggestions below.
Condiments like chutney are a real stalwart here in the UK. Whilst their roots lie in Indian style chutneys, this British style preserve is a great way to store tomatoes for the longer term whilst maintaining the fresh flavour.
You can make chutney from many different fruits and vegetables – you can find all my other chutney recipes here:
How to Serve Fresh Tomato Chutney
A cheese board just isn’t a cheese board without some chutney! So this is most certainly one of the most common ways that I’ll serve it. Tomato and cheese are natural bedfellows and you just can’t go wrong with this one.
Make a cheese board into a mini meal by including at least two different cheeses, some charcuterie like prosciutto and sliced chorizo, fresh salad leaves and crackers or fresh bread. To make it into a more substantial ploughman’s lunch style platter, add savouries like quiche, pork pies and/or sausage rolls.
You can also bake with chutneys – this fresh tomato style chutney is especially delicious in my Chutney & Cheese Sausage Rolls with Puff Pastry. Or add as a layer in the bottom of a fully loaded quiche like my Puff Pastry Quiche.
You can even pile onto some chicken and bake it like you might with salsa or serve it as a condiment with roast meats in place of apple sauce or cranberry sauce.
Fresh Cherry Tomato Chutney Ingredients
Tomatoes
You can really use any tomatoes to make this chutney. But I prefer to use smaller cherry tomatoes because they have much less of the liquidy-seedy-middle. With more flesh per pound, the flavour of the chutney is more pronounced and I prefer the texture – I don’t like it being overly seedy.
If you are using larger tomatoes, just discard most of the tomato middles and most of the seeds. I have a tendency to do this with most things that I’m making anyway. You just need to make sure that you weigh your tomatoes after doing this, not before.
Onion
I like to stick with using white onions for this chutney which preserves that very fresh and vibrant colour. But if you want to use red onions then you can, the flavour will just be a tiny bit sweeter and the colour a little darker overall.
Apple
The apple in the recipe does two things. It adds body and texture to the chutney. And it adds to the sweet /sour elements of the flavour profile.
Which apple you choose will affect this a little. Cooking apples like Bramleys will be a little tarter. Regular eating apples will generally be a little sweeter.
You can use frozen apples if you wish but I do prefer the crunchier texture of fresh apples. You don’t need to peel the apples unless you really wish to, but the core, seeds and stem do need to be removed.
Vinegar
Keeping with the keep-things-light theme of this recipe, I’ve used white wine vinegar. You can also use cyder vinegar. You don’t want to use actual white vinegar, that would be too harsh in flavour, I keep that for cleaning, not eating!
If you have something darker like a red wine vinegar, you can use that. But as with other ingredient swaps, just be aware that you will end up with a darker coloured chutney. Malt vinegar is one darker option best avoided – the distinctive flavour is just too much. Save that one for pickling eggs!
Balsamic vinegar is a good option but it makes a whole different chutney – I do have a recipe for this specific variation coming soon.
Sugar
Although by this point you might be assuming that I’ve used white sugar, I have actually plumped for light brown sugar. A chutney does ideally need those richer caramel notes of the brown sugar.
White is an acceptable substitute but I wouldn’t recommend using dark brown or demerara sugar. The flavour is too strong and the texture too crunchy respectively.
Be Flexible
I’ve discussed the various options for switching up the base ingredients and how that will change the recipe. So lets concentrate on what else you can add:-
Add chopped fresh red chillies along with the tomatoes for a spicy kick. Have a little taste of the chillies to see how hot they actually are. Only add what you feel comfortable with. You can alternatively add dried chilli flakes or a mixture of both.
Adding lemon zest will give the chutney a citrus freshness.
Dried or fresh herbs can also be added. Because they’ll be cooked, it is better to stick with hardier herbs like rosemary, oregano or thyme. Basil is better added to a dish where you’re serving the chutney rather than being cooked into it. Be sparing with any added herbs as they can easily overwhelm the other flavours.
It is quite common to find dried fruits in chutney. Raisins or sultanas are very common additions to tomato chutney. Again, be sparing, you want them to add a slight additional flavour, not overwhelm the tomatoes. More exotic dried fruits like peach and mango also pair very well with tomato.
Vegetarian or Vegan Fresh Cherry Tomato Chutney
This simple recipe is suitable for both vegetarians and vegans as written.
Make Allergy Friendly Chutney
This recipe is free from egg, dairy, gluten and nuts.
Please note that this recipe may contain other allergens not referred to above and any variations suggested have not been tested unless otherwise stated. For more information regarding any dietary information provided on this website, please refer to my Nutritional Disclaimer.
Equipment Notes for Simple Tomato Chutney
Unlike with jam, you don’t need to use an extra large pan to make chutney. As long as the ingredients fit in and there is room to stir without chutney spilling everywhere, a regular saucepan is big enough.
As always, basics like scales, measuring spoons and a silicone spatula will be needed. Silicone means that you can properly scrape chutney from the sides of the pan which will prevent burning.
A comprehensive list of the equipment used to make this recipe is included in the main recipe card below. Click on any item to see an example. There are no hard and fast rules so many items can be sensibly substituted to achieve the same results.
How to Sterilise Jars and Preserve/Can Chutney
There is a whole world of variations and advice for how you should prepare your jars and deal with the jars once they’re sealed. They vary from person to person and country to country.
Here in the UK we largely make sure that the jars are properly sterilised, fill the jars with the hot chutney, seal them and that’s that. In the US it is almost a given that the jars will then be “processed” to complete the “canning” process. I have purposely provided no links here – if you’d like to learn more about canning, Google is your friend.
There are a lot of strong feelings about this in the “canning community” (yes there is one) which I have no interest in being drawn into. All I know is that UK cooks have been making jams, chutneys and preserves for a very long time without any issues. Therefore I am more than happy to follow the UK process for my chutneys.
Jar Sterilisation Options
There are several ways that you can sterilise your jam jars.
- Run the jars and lids through a hot wash in the dishwasher.
- Bake the jars and lids in the oven on a baking tray.
- Microwave the jars and boil the lids in water.
- Boil the jars and lids in water.
Whichever method you choose the only important thing is to make sure that the jars and lids are left to dry without being touched. And that you do not under any circumstances touch the inside of the jars or lids as this can contaminate them and undo your sterilisation. Tongs are your friend.
For the record, I usually use the dishwasher method.
How to Tell if the Jar is Sealed
It is essential to add the lid to the hot jars filled with the hot chutney straight away. As the jar and contents cool, a vacuum is created in the jar and the lid will be pulled downwards. To help this, I often turn my jars upside down to cool.
This means that when you press the lid, it doesn’t move or pop. When you open a jar of properly sealed chutney, the lid will then pop. And an opened or not properly sealed jar will pop when you press it.
If your jars don’t seal properly, you can either keep the jar in the fridge and eat it relatively quickly or go though a canning process to seal them. The choice is yours.
Get Ahead
The chutney is best if left to mature for at least a few days so ideally you do need to plan ahead. You can eat it straight away, hot even, but its not going to be great. Once the chutney sits and matures, the vinegar sharpness starts to soften and all the flavours start to blend and become richer.
If you are going to properly can and seal the jars, you can make chutney many months in advance. This is ideal for gifting etc.
If you do want to make the jars shelf stable, you will need to sterilise your jars and follow procedures to make sure they are sealed properly.
It will keep for years sealed and many months in the fridge once the jar is opened. You must be careful to ensure that you don’t cross contaminate however – a bit of rogue butter on a knife or a crumb of cheese can make a preserve spoil much earlier than it should.
Cherry Tomato Chutney Tips
You don’t need to stand and stir the chutney the whole time it is cooking. But it is important to make sure it is given a stir as everything is melting together. And then I tend to hover a little more towards the end of cooking as it is starting to thicken up.
The actual cooking time will vary depending on the quantity you make and the size pan you use. A pan where there is less visible surface area will take longer to evaporate some of the liquid. A wider pan will be quicker.
The trick is to make sure that the chutney cooks for at least half an hour. This gives the onion and apple enough chance to soften. If it is still quite thin after this time, then you can turn up the heat to boil off the liquids faster.
I cut the onion and apple very fine in this recipe because whilst they do provide bulk and body to the chutney, I don’t like large visible chunks. They also cook down faster. The hero of this chutney is the cherry tomatoes.
Don’t forget to let me know in the comments if you try making this recipe – I want to know what you think and if you made any substitutions, how did it turn out?
Still Have Questions?
Simple! Just contact me and I will do my best to help as quickly as I am able. Head over to my Contact Me page, any of my social media channels or post a comment at the bottom of this page and I’ll see what I can do.
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More Tomato Recipes
The Recipe
Fresh Cherry Tomato Chutney Recipe
Equipment
Ingredients
- 100 g White Onions
- 750 g Cherry Tomatoes
- 250 g Apple
- 200 ml Vinegar - Cyder or White Wine
- 120 g Light Brown Sugar
- ½ tsp Sea Salt Flakes
Instructions
- Finely chop roughly 100g White Onion.
- Halve 750g Cherry Tomatoes. If you want a less chunky chutney, cut them into quarters instead – I find this too tedious!
- Finely chop 250g Apple – do not include the core but there is no need to peel. Do this prep last to avoid the apple discolouring.
- Add the chopped onion, apple and ⅔ of the tomatoes to a large saucepan.
- Add 200ml Vinegar, 120g Light Brown Sugar and ½ tsp Sea Salt Flakes.
- Place on a medium high heat and keep stirring until the mixture starts to boil.
- Turn the heat down so it is just simmering and cook for around 20 minutes. Give it a stir every 5 or 10 minutes to make sure nothing is sticking. It is a good idea to keep a closer eye on it the thicker it gets.
- Add the remaining cherry tomatoes to the pan.
- Stir in and leave to simmer for a further 15 minutes. You will need to stir more regularly towards the end of the cooking time to ensure that nothing is catching on the bottom of the pan.
- The chutney is ready once you can drag your spatula through and the gap doesn’t immediately fill with liquid. If you need to, you can turn the heat up a little and continue to cook any excess liquid away until it is done.
- Carefully spoon the hot chutney into jars or your preferred container.
- Ideally allow a minimum of 3 days to help the flavours develop before tucking in.
Elaine says
I grew a lot of cherry tomatoes at my allotment and wasn’t sure what to do with all of them. This was a great way to keep them for longer and the flavours are delicious.
Janice says
I have lots of cherry tomatoes in my greenhouse, so I thought I’d give your recipe a try. It was really easy to make and it tastes delicious.
Lesley says
I really enjoyed the fresh flavours of tomato and apple in this chutney. A perfect summer chutney that was all the better as no dreaded dry fruit in it. It was perfect on my cheeseboard at the weekend.