Making Applesauce

01-Aug-2006

My baby apples are coming into their own. And that isn’t coming without a bit of trouble. I had a bumper crop this year.

Tons of apples. Tons of apples on branches I meant to prune earlier in the year. Tons of apples that should have been thinned that were on branches I should have pruned but couldn’t reach.

Wind storm. Broken branches with tons of apples. Oops. Time to use them up!

The branch actually broke a couple weeks ago. There were over 3 dozen apples on that one branch! Wow! They are all on the small side – from being too crowded on the branch and from being stopped short in their development. I opted to let the apples get a bit riper before doing anything with them. These are Gravensteins which is a tart apple. A green (as in not ripe) tart apple is very tart! But it was finally time to make a little batch and see what happens.

Applesauce is actually one of the easiest things to make. Follow the pictures to follow the steps.

Prepare the Apples

Core and quarter the apples. If the apples are large you may want to cut them into eighthes. It really doesn’t matter but the smaller they are the faster they will cook down.

Add just a little water to the pan – just enough to keep the apples from sticking until they start cooking down themselves.

Cover the pan and place over medium heat.

Cook the Apples

Cook over medium heat, stirring the apples occasionally. The higher the heat the more often they will need to be stirred.

Once they are totally mushy remove the pan from the heat.

Separate the Apples from the Skins

Fill a chinois about half way with apples. Move the pestle around separating out the pulp from the skins. Continue to circulate the pestle, occasionally pushing down apples, until all that remains in the chinois are skins.

Clean the skins from the chinois and repeat until all apples are processed.

Season the Applesauce

Add sugar to taste.

Some people also add cinnamon at this point but I prefer not to. If I want cinnamon I will add at the time I use it. This give you more versatility in using the applesauce.

Final Product

The color of your applesauce will vary depending on the skin color of the apples. If you have very red apples the sauce will sometimes be almost pink!

This was just a small batch but if I had made a large batch the next step would be to fill canning jars with the applesauce and then process them in a water bath.

It’s really nice to have a few jars of applesauce put away for the winter. I’ll probably do a bigger batch soon. I already have a lot of windfalls and soon it will be time to actually pick what is on the tree.