A few weeks ago, some friends and I went apple picking. I picked THE HELL out of some of the fruit heavy trees. Like, I picked 13 pounds of apples. More apples than anyone else picked. At home, we ate a lot of them; I made a pie, I made some pork chop dish and we ate them with with cheese as dessert one night. You may think all of these things would take care of 13 pounds of apples. It does not. So I came to a near final resort: applesauce (but not pork chops and applesauce). It was nearly the easiest thing to make, and I understand I make this claim often. But seriously, applesauce is the easiest thing you can make. It’s even made easier because it virtually requires no ingredients, save some cinnamon..if that’s what you are in to, like me. This time when I say easy, I mean EASY.
Step 1: Slice apples and remove any innerds.
Step 2: In a pot/Dutch oven/heavy bottomed sauce pan add water (apple cider if you’re so fancy, which I am) until it’s about an inch high (thick?) in the pan of coice.
Step 3: Turn on burner.
Step 4: Place your apples in the pot (Harrelson and Goldencrisps or some Honeycrisp rip-off as seen here).
Step 5: Cover pot and wait about 20 minutes until apples are really soft.
Step 6: Run softened apples through a food grinder. If you do not have a food grinder use a potato masher and do it by hand (The only drawback to this will be the skins, which obviously cannot be mashed. Instead, think ahead! Do you have a food grinder? NO. Cut off skins before boiling. OR. Do you have a food grinder? YES. Keep skins on.)!
Step 7: Put mashed apples back into pot. Add cinnamon. For the 8 or so apples I used, I added about 1 teaspoon of cinnamon. It was lovely.
Fin.
See? Easy breezy! The best part of this entire process was when David came home and taste tested it. Wearily he asked how much sugar was in it. I was proud to say that there was no added sugar. Homemade applesauce is pretty much the easiest and healthiest dessert.
Nature – 1, Factory Processed Foods – 0.
Looks delicious! When I made applesauce fairly recently, I started with peeled apples, and just threw them into my slow cooker. I didn’t use any extra water (although apple cider sounds like it would be amazing), and I just cooked it until the apples literally fell apart when I stirred them. Took a few hours, but required none of my attention, with the bonus of my house smelling like applesauce all day. :)
Tracy – yes! You just helped prod my claim of “easy” over he edge. It’s so easy you have to do NOTHING! AND its a twofer with the lovely smell permeating your house. Beautiful!
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You can also use a…I think it’s called a ricer or a food mill…to get the skins off. If you want to go old school. Like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_mill
excellent point. There was a time I wanted a food mill, until i realized it’d be duplicative of the food processor we already have. I can’t have (too many) dupes in the kitchen. It drives me nuts.