Homemade applesauce for canning

 

This year I decided to preserve some applesauce.

There is a local farm where you can pick your own apples at $.40/lb, which compared to the $1.49/lb at the grocery store, it was a bargain and worth a try.

 

At the recommendation of the farm owner, I went with the empire apple (vs. his other options of Jonathon, golden delicious or red delicious.)

This was our load of apples (15 pounds worth)

 

I had my little helpers putting the apples in the bags after I picked them and it was quite the surprise to find out that one of my helpers was taste testing each apple to make sure it tasted good! 

 

I found a recipe for applesauce in my pressure cooker manual, it was pretty easy and the sauce turned out smooth, nicely colored, and sweet without adding any sugar. 

 

If you don't have a recipe, this is the one I used and a few tips (*) I learned along the way:

 

Applesauce

Wash, peel (I used a potato peeler), core and slice apples. I cut into quarters using a corer/slicer, but if you don't have on I don't think is matters to much how you cut them. 

I put the apple slices into ascorbic acid solution (*gallon of water with 1 Tbsp 'Fruit Fresh') to prevent browning until I got them all cut up.

Drain well.

Place slices in pan (*I would use a stock pot or something with high sides, mostly for the re-boil part because it 'spits' once it is all blended up) with 1/2 cup water

(*I had 42 medium sized apples and still only used the 1/2 C, so my thoughts are that it is to keep the apples from burning until they soften up and start releasing their own liquid.)

Cook until tender (*the apples change color, they seem more transparent if that makes sense, and they start to break up pretty easy).

The recipe says to press through a sieve or food mill, but I just put them in a blender.

Sweeten to taste (I didn't add any sugar)

Reheat sauce to boiling.

Pack into clean, hot Mason jars, leaving 1/2-inch headspace.

Adjust jar lids. (I like to wipe the rim just to ensure a proper seal)

 

Process:

Pressure canner: Process at 5 pounds pressure, pints 8 minutes and quarts 10 minutes

Boiling water canning: Process pints 15 minutes (now I did quarts and it was not in the recipe so I just did 20 minutes because that is what they recommended for apples)

 

My 42 medium apples yielded 3 quarts.