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When you see how easy it is to make your own applesauce at home, you'll never buy it from the store again. There are very few ingredients and very few steps, and you'll have a wonderfully seasoned, wonderfully yummy side dish that only slightly resembles the stuff on the grocery store shelves.
The most important ingredient in making homemade applesauce is patience. Apples are a close second.
Seriously. Patience is key. Applesauce needs to cook for a long time, so walk away from it. Aside from stirring it now and then, just leave it alone.
Ingredients for homemade applesauce
- Apples.
- 10 pounds of apples will yield about 6-7 cups of applesauce. Don't feel like you have to make that much, though. 5 pounds will yield 3-3.5 cups of applesauce, about the same amount as a large jar you'd buy in the store.
- Look for sweet apples (like Fuji), not tart ones (stay away from the Granny Smiths).
- Some people say that applesauce is better when made from a mixture of different kinds of apples. I use whatever apples I have in the house.
- Sugar
- Cinnamon or apple pie spice or pumpkin pie spice
- Water, if cooking on the stove
How to prepare your homemade applesauce
First, wash and cut your apples. (If you are going to peel them, this would be the time. I leave the peels on because they're good for you.) I use an apple wedger for this step. It removes the core and slices the apples into eight wedges, all with one smooth motion. Discard the cores.
Put all of the apple slices into your Crockpot, cover them, turn it on low, and walk away for 6 hours. (You could also do this in a large stockpot on the stove. In that case, you'll want to use Medium-Low heat, put an inch or two of water in the bottom, and stir it every fifteen to twenty minutes. The result is the same, but it will cook faster than in the Crockpot and there's a risk of scorching. Be careful if you go this route.) Any recipe that says you can cook homemade applesauce for an hour or two is lying. It takes many hours.
Once the apples begin to soften, add sugar and cinnamon to taste. I add sugar 1/4 cup at a time and cinnamon 1 teaspoon at a time, and do lots of tasting. There aren't hard and fast amounts here because different apples will need more or less sweetening, and different people like their applesauce more or less sweet. That's the beauty of making it yourself!
After seasoning the applesauce, let it cook another 1 to 2 hours in the Crockpot or another 30 minutes to an hour on the stove. This allows the flavors to blend together.
If you want a smoother consistency, you can puree the applesauce in a blender or run it through a food mill or grinder. Since I leave the peels on the apples, I process the cooked applesauce through my KitchenAid stand mixer's Food Grinder attachment. The peels get broken up, but not discarded, and it comes out just the way my family likes it.
If your applesauce gets too thick, you can thin it down with apple juice or water. I use 100% apple juice with no sugar added when this happens.
Dealing with leftover homemade applesauce
This is a problem I don't often have; my homemade applesauce is usually gone by the end of dinner. If you do have leftovers, however, make sure to store them in the refrigerator. You can stir homemade applesauce into oatmeal, use it in cooking breads, muffins, or cakes (in place of an equal amount of oil), or over ice cream. Applesauce is a very versatile food.
For more information on homemade applesauce
Pick Your Own - I love this website. The homemade applesauce recipe there is illustrated with photos. She also goes into detail about the different options for processing the applesauce, including ricers, mills, grinders, and sieves.
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