How To Make Homemade Apple Sauce

step by step instructions and ingredients to make deliciously fresh apple sauce you can enjoy all year!

Recipe Submitted by: Cynthia Newman of Hillsville, Va

1. We have always been told these apples are a strawberry apple. The tree only bears every other year. They are a tart apple.
2. Wash apples. Then peel and remove the core. This can be done with an apple peeler and corer, which makes large batches easy to process. Our apples have stripes in them after they are peeled. You may use any type of apple. This is a great way to use mushy or slightly bruised (cut out bruises) apples you don't want to eat with your hands. Most prefer making apple sauce with apples that are sweet, which reduces the amount of sugar you'll use in your batch.
3. Cut the apples into rough 1" cubes. There's no need for uniform but try not to make them too different in size.
4. Wash jars in hot, soapy water. Rinse with hot water. Dry upside down on a towel or in warm oven to keep them from cracking because you'll later be adding adding hot liquid applesauce.
5. We boil our lids to a good rolling boil in a sauce pan for a few minutes on the stove. These are removed from sauce pan and placed on top of jar easily using a magnetic lid wand.

 

Make

1. Put apples in a large pot. Add enough water to cover the bottom of the pan. You don't want to boil them; you want to steam them, so add liquid accordingly. Heat on high and when it gets really going, turn it to medium high until all the apples are soft all the way through.
2. Squish the apples through a sieve. The hand-crank foley food mill works well or you can squish the apples through a metal sieve like we did. You don't have to peel the apples but if you do this step is much easier.

Preserve

1. Put strained apples back on the stove. Bring to a boil to get them hot all the way through. (About 20 minutes) This is when we added some sugar to taste. You can also try adding cinnamon and brown sugar.
2. Dip the applesauce into pint jars using a canning funnel. Wipe the jar rim so no food or dust particles prevents a jar from sealing. Put the lids on with the rings and tighten snug.
3. Wait for the jars to cool and seal. The finished product was simply beautiful.