Months of hot weather have produced a record-breaking year for apples in the UK, with the harvest coming in bigger and earlier than ever. That means it’s also going to be a record-breaking year for cider.
According to the National Association of Cider Makers, the warm summer has also delivered apples “full of rich flavours and natural sweetness, perfect for cider making”. In orchards across the UK, boughs are breaking under the weight of the ripening fruit. Thatchers Cider has begun its earliest apple harvest in the company’s 121-year history. At Sandford Orchards near Exeter, they’re installing extra tanks to keep up with production.
How will we cope with all the extra cider coming our way? The good news is we have time – the main cider apple crop isn’t harvested until October or even November. But if you want to make a head start, here are 17 choice recipes to help you use up your personal cider quota for the year.
As a culinary ingredient, cider is particularly known for its affinity with pork, as demonstrated in Thomasina Miers’s braised pork shoulder with cider and fennel seeds, in which the pork is left to braise in cider for three and a half to five hours; or in Nigel Slater’s pork chops, cider and parsnips, which only takes about 40 minutes on the hob.
You can also, of course, simmer a whole gammon joint in cider along with a few spices. Expect to use at least a litre of cider to cover the ham. In leaner times that might seem wasteful, but remember: we’re trying to get on top of a glut.
Delia Smith’s bangers braised in cider adds a complimentary garnish of sliced and fried apples to the mix, while Yotam Ottolenghi’s chorizo, cider and chickpea stew is a Spanish take on the same idea – Spain has its own tradition of using cider, or sidra, in cooking.
But cider is also versatile enough to do its work on other meats. As Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall puts it, “using cider in cooking is a bit like using fruit and wine and perhaps a little vinegar and a pinch of sugar, all at the same time”. His lamb stew with cider deploys it where another recipe might call for stock. It serves a similar purpose in chicken Normandy, and in Slater’s chicken thighs with mushrooms and cider.
Cider has a place in cooking seafood, too, most famously with mussels, where it’s used as a steaming liquid; a serviceable – and maybe, at this time of year, preferable – substitute for white wine. Angela Hartnett’s mussels with cider and pancetta is an object lesson in keeping things simple. Cider and salt-grilled salmon, a winning Guardian reader’s recipe from 2015, uses cider as a marinade for the fish.
An onion soup made with cider instead of wine gives that French classic a distinctly British twist. Tom Kerridge’s version is topped with cheese-and-apple toasts made with cheddar and a ripe granny smith cut into matchsticks. Dan Lepard’s rye loaf relies on a yeast, flour and cider mixture left to develop in the fridge overnight.
While it’s less common to turn to cider as an ingredient in cakes and desserts, it’s not unheard of. Nigella Lawson’s cider and five-spice bundt cake is one example, combining ginger, black treacle, cinnamon, Chinese five-spice and cider, baked in a fluted, doughnut-shaped bundt tin. This cider and pumpkin cake uses two bundt cakes joined base-to-base, to recreate the shape of a pumpkin. The recipe tells you to bake the two cakes one after the other, presumably on the supposition that nobody has two bundt tins.
Cider sorbet with cheddar and mint may sound like a slightly challenging collection of flavours, but the cheddar here is a stick of cheese deployed as a garnish – the same way you would a flake in a 99 – and is therefore wholly optional.
Finally, a classic mulled cider from Jamie Oliver. And just in case you think it’s still too early in the autumn to start mulling things, here’s another recipe for a cocktail called cider gingerade, made from gin, ginger syrup, dry cider and lime juice. It can’t ever be too early for one of those.
