H & H: Apples!

Clara and I go through a LOT of applesauce. It is one of her favorite foods. I like to eat it too, but I really love to bake with it. I substitute it for oil in all sorts of recipes. So, since we you can't drive half an hour in any direction from our house without reaching an apple orchard, it was only natural that we take advantage of apple season to make our own. To get our apples, we visited a favorite place from my childhood: the Apple Barn in Bennington, VT. They have all sorts of yummy things there, but our objective was the back room, where you can get "utility" apples for $7 a half bushel (about $0.29 per pound). These are apples that are not beautiful enough for the front room displays - they may have bruises, be funny shapes, or for some reason just didn't make the cut (half the time I can't tell what's wrong with them). But they are still delicious and perfect for baking or making applesauce.

I won't lie, in my low-tech kitchen this was a bit of a process. It's not difficult or tricky, just time consuming. Since I don't have a food mill, I had to peel, core and chop all the apples by hand (although with my second batch, Luke helped. He's wonderful!).

 The apples then went into my biggest stock pot (I think it's 6 qts - not big enough!) with about an inch of water and a teaspoon or so of lemon juice in the bottom. I turned the burner on so the apples could cook as I was chopping the rest, and just kept adding until I couldn't fit any more without making it spill when I stirred!

 I cooked them for a good long while, until they were nice and mushy, and then pureed them in my food processor in batches. Because it was late at night, I put them in bowls in the fridge overnight. 

 The next morning I returned the applesauce to the stock pot and reheated it while the jars and lids were getting sterilized.

 See how lovely and smooth it is?

 Once the jars were hot I took them out of the canner one by one, drained them, filled with the hot applesauce, added a lid and returned to the canner (sorry, no pictures of this part - you have to move fast and I didn't have anyone around to document). The filled quarts processed for 20 minutes, and then cooled on the counter.

Clara, of course, helped by being irresistibly cute.

With my second batch, I did half in the stock pot and half in the crock pot. The stock pot got refrigerated overnight, the crock pot was on all night. The applesauce from the crock pot was incredibly dark, reduced by half, and had an amazing taste! Almost like caramel apples (it was also mostly Honeycrisps I separated out). The two batches switched pots after quick trips through the food processor. Here you can see the color difference!

  

Here are some of the finished jars next to a jar from my original batch. 

Left to right: Crock pot honeycrisp, mixed, two stock pot jars, one jar from my previous batch.

This applesauce is so, so delicious. Nothing from the store could ever touch it. Even if you don't can it, you really should make some this fall. It can be frozen, or refrigerated and eaten within a week or so (if it lasts that long). Clara was my taste tester and she fully approves! I think she ate 3 1/2 bowls without slowing down. :)