Apple Sauce
The best traditions start without even realizing that they’re going to happen year after year. One year, I’m not even sure how long ago, my mom and I decided to go pick apples and make apple sauce from scratch. And then we just kept doing it! It’s an all day affair waiting for the apples to boil down but we make ourselves some tea and enjoy the time.
Even before it feels like fall the apples start to ripen and are ready to be picked. Most years we do pick our own apples. I’m typically in charge of carrying all the apples around the orchard (sometimes 80 lbs) since I’m the “young and spry” one. My mother handles the actual picking. I love being outside but am not one to touch nature. She’s in charge of sticking most of her body into the apple tree to grab the best looking apple. I’ll stay on the path away from the bugs and the rotted apples. Yes… I can be a little fussy. Eventually I have to cut off my mom from picking even more apples because it is now physically impossible to continue carrying them. In recent years, we have started renting a wheel barrow at the orchard which has increased our harvest. Ideally, when choosing your apples at the orchard or in the grocery store you should pick a variety of apples because that will give you the most complex flavor.
The trouble with increasing the harvest is that means more apples to peel! Up until a few years ago we were cutting and peeling every single apple by hand. Woof! Yes, our hands were cramped and sticky by the end but there is something therapeutic about chopping up almost a hundred apples on a chilly fall day. A couple years ago we “invested” in a twenty dollar Apple Corer Peeler and now it is a much speedier process to cut all those apples.
After they are all peeled and cut to relatively the same size everybody goes into the pot!
Cook the apples down until they are fork-tender and will be easy to blend. Everybody has a different preference for how thick and chunky they like their applesauce so play around with the recipe below until you get it exactly the way you like it. Personally, I’m a fan of thick and smooth so that’s about what you’ll get using the ratio’s in my recipe. I hope you enjoy the process as much as my mom and I do.
Apple Sauce
Ingredients
- 12 medium apples
- 1 cup water
- 1/3 cup light brown sugar
Instructions
- Core, peel and slice all the apples into equal sizes.
- For every twelve apples add 1 cup of water to a large pot.
- Bring to a low boil and then simmer for 1-2 hours until apples are fork tender.
- Using an immersion blender, puree the apples until your ideal consistency. Use the immersion blender or a large spoon to incorporate the brown sugar.
Notes
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