Applesauce

Applesauce

Making applesauce can sound pretty intimidating at least I know it did to me. I mean it's so cheap to buy why would you ever bother making it? 

• Well one reason would be you have apples that are about to go bad. 
• Another reason would be you want to know exactly what is in your applesauce especially if feeding it to a small child.
• Perhaps you are just curious on the process. 

Whatever the reason it's not quite as hard as it may seem and afterwards you have some extremely potent apple juice and spice it up for some hot apple cider.

Now I forgot to take pictures of everything so you'll have to forgive me on that front.

Step 1

Preparing the apples. Now there are two ways really to go about this. The  way I did it is I just took one of those apple slicer and corers and skins and all tossed them into my stock pot. Another way is to peel the apples which would make the process simpler and you probably won't have to work so hard to get every bit of applesauce. I was lazy at the start so had to work harder at the end. 

Step 2

Cooking the apples. With your apples in a stock pot put about an inch of water into the bottom. Cover and cook. I would suggest you bring the temp up to a rapid boil you may want to make sure you can stir your apples but it won't take long for that little bit of water to boil. Cover your pot, reduce heat and let simmer. Truthfully I didn't time this I just left it on the stove for like half an hour or so and checked the apples with a fork. If the fork takes any pressure to go into the apple then it's not ready. You want these apples SOFT! 

Step 3


Now your apples may have a lot of juice so you may want to drain them through a sieve. We don't want our apples too watery otherwise you'll have apple soup instead of sauce!
I got lazy and used a slotted spoon until I got near the bottom. Though I also was doing about 12 lbs of apples!




Step 4

I used a food mill for the next part. You can use a food processor if you peeled your apples for small batches. There are a few different ways but what you are trying to do is get a consistent texture and size especially if you are canning it.

Child labor works pretty well for this whole process. Especially when there is apple pie sitting near by.


And really now from this point it's just working the apples through. If you didn't peel them then you'll need to stop every so often and scoop the peel out. You can try to squeeze a bit more out of it later since it doesn't cleanly come away, just make sure that you had cleaned your apples well before starting this process.

If you prefer a sweeter more spiced applesauce you can add sugar and cinnamon. The amount of sugar needed will really depend on what kind of apples you used. I'd take it slow and taste test as you go until you get what you want.


Step 5

Now I didn't take any pictures of this part but apple sauce can be water bath canned. I had to really look into this because there has been so many conflicting opinions on this but the general consensus is that it is fine to do.
You will need to make sure your jars are clean and keep the applesauce nice and hot on the stove. What you are doing is hot packing the apple sauce.
Look up your canning time according to elevation and please do be careful as you always should be while canning.

There you have it! 100% natural, yummy applesauce!