Northwest Foraging: Easy Essentials: Homemade Applesauce

Homemade applesauce is one of the easy things to make that can save you money and give you a healthier food for your family. I make the applesauce with skins and all by using a grinder after cooking the apples.

I have planted 10 apple trees on my property, but in the meantime, I have to make do with buying what we need each year. After a trip to Montana, the family stopped at the fruit stand in Thorpe, Washington and I bought a box of Honeycrisp Apples and a box of Granny Smith apples. The Honeycrisp's looked delicious, and the Granny Smiths were on sale!

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Unfortunately, my cheapness got the better of me on this occasion. The Honeycrisp's were an excellent apple and sweet, but the Granny Smith apples were too sour and resulted in me having to add sugar to the applesauce. Definitely I will use only sweet apples in the future for making applesauce.

My basic recipe:

Wash the apples.

Slice and core the apples.

Place in a large pot - I use my 30QT stockpot so that I can make a large batch. Add about 1.5 inches of water to the bottom of the pot.

Bring the pot to a boil and let the apples cook until soft - skins and all.

I then use my kitchenaid grinder attachment and put all the apples and sauce through this to grind up the skins.

Add sugar if needed.

Can in a pressure canner at 10 psi for 20 minutes.

I used 30 apples and made 7 quart jars of applesauce. A case of apples resulted in two batches.