This week I’m making applesauce…a LOT of applesauce. This batch, and probably most of the batches I make in the next three or four weeks are NOT going to get canned though. Applesauce is my secret snacking weapon! I’m always looking for healthy snacks to appease the ravening hordes hungry guys in my house who go searching for calories in between meals.
Right now the apples in the grocery stores are plentiful and priced right. I buy several 5# bags of apples (Romes are my favorite for applesauce) each week and keep our fridge stocked with fresh, homemade sauce. Homemade applesauce is an easy, healthy, inexpensive snack.
Homemade Applesauce
- Wash apples
- Quarter them and cut out the bad bits
- Boil a whole bunch in a deep stock pot with an inch or two of water until mushy. Don’t turn the burner on high because it’s possible to burn the apples.
- To make the apple milling process easier, I usually give the cooked apples a brief whir through my food processor or I use my submersion blender to coarsely break the apples up. The cores and skins are still on the apples, so you’re not really trying to make this smooth. It just helps speed up the milling step.
- Put the mush through the apple mill
- Add sugar as needed to the sauce
- Put the sauce back into a large stock pot and bring back up to boil
- Sterilize lids and rings
- Wash quart jars (the jars ended up getting sterilized also, but every cookbook I can find says that running them through the dishwasher is enough.)
- Put sauce in jars
- Water bath the jars for 23 minutes
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If you make applesauce at all regularly (or tomato sauce, or jams and jellies, etc.), it is definitely worth the investment to get a food mill. You will save a lot of time, your yield will be greater, and the flavor will be even more intense and wonderfully evocative of fall. Doesn’t take long for it to pay for itself.
Also, if you don’t have the time or equipment to can your extra applesauce, it freezes beautifully as well. Put into the ziplock freezer bags of your preferred size and lay them on a baking sheet until just frozen. The packages then will stack with minimal space needed.
Great tip about it being a snack they can eat without asking mom! Thanks!!! My boys also like to make hot applesauce in the fall which basically amounts to dumping in a bunch of cinnamon and warming it up in the microwave.