I’ve talked before about my love of making applesauce from scratch, but can you believe I’ve never canned applesauce before?!
In fact, I’ve never canned any food before! Despite our intention to cook most meals from scratch, I make each component from scratch each time we cook. What a waste of time!
This past week, with friends guiding the way, I discovered how easy canning can be!
Here’s how we made our applesauce:
We gathered and washed lots and lots of apples.
(How lucky are we to get free apples from our friends with fruit trees in their backyard?!)
We cut out obvious worm holes, but ignored bruises, and piled whole apples into stock pans filled with some water. We brought the water to a boil, lowered the heat and then simmered the apples until they were mushy.
(We’ve found the applesauce tastes much more flavorful when using whole apples, so resist the urge to peel them!)
We then used a food strainer
We all took turns turning the handle on the food strainer
We filled sterilized jars with the applesauce, covered the jars with Tattler reusable canning lids (BPA free!), and boiled them in a water bath to seal the jars.
What fun we had working together! It feels so good to use your hands and make something incredibly delicious.
I now am eager to put up more: preserves, condiments, salsas, sauerkraut, and, of course, more applesauce before apple season is over.
Next summer we are going to can jars and jars of blackberry jam. Nom nom nom!
i’m still pretty intimidated/terrified by the canning process. HOWEVER, i will happily take any canned goods off the hands of anyone who makes too much :D
If only you lived closer — I’d drop some off! xo
the applesauce looks amazing! and it is so awesome that you guys have access to such beautiful apples via friends! the kids look like they had a blast. :)
They so enjoyed themselves and have been proudly talking about the experience too. When I asked Miss Leyba if she wanted some applesauce, she reminded me, “Mom, I made it!” ;)
That is one handy tool! A food strainer! Will be great to de-seed the blackberries! What a great idea mixing many diff. varieties of apples. No wonder the result is a delicious and interesting, fresh flavored applesauce! Do you know what varieties were included?
See Tina’s post below about apple varieties! The food strainer was so great! (Easy for the kids to use and worked really, really well!) I’ve added a bunch of canning supplies to my amazon wishlist. I think this may evolve into a new passion!
Wonderful photos Carrie! Thanks — I’m going to put a link on my blog for the family! To answer your Mom’s question: 1 variety is golden delicious and we are not sure about the other two… although I suspect one of them was Rome. It was so much fun!!!
Such a great day! Thank you for hosting and teaching us! xo
When my mom and I made it the other day, we did remove the skins–we were trying for a lighter color, which we achieved with some lemon juice. Mom has this great apple corer slicer. We just took off the skins and mom used a knife to remove the seeds and stems. This made a lot more work on the front side, but the advantage here was we only need to use the immersion blender to make the sauce once we were done. The immersion blender has saved a lot of mess and time this year while we canned–especially with the tomato sauce!
I love it! I’ve been meaning to try out adding lemon juice. (Does it change the taste?) I’ll have to try it next time! Thanks for the tip!
If one doesn’t have a food strainer or food mill…because one lives in a tiny apartment…are there any other options? Can this be done on a smaller scale with a little food processor?
P.S. This looks DELICIOUS.
P.P.S. The children are 100% adorable!
Alexis — I think a food processor would work, as would a potato masher or, if all else fails, a fork! I would recommend peeling and coring the apples first. Go for it!
p.s. Thank you and YES!
Brings back memories. That food strainer is really neat much better then my food mill that you have to keep cleaning the skin out. I never heard of those lids, they are great.
Thanks, Cathie! Tina’s food strainer made processing SO easy and I adore those Tattler lids. Unfortunately not every single lid sealed, but we felt that was a small price to pay for BPA-free applesauce, safe for us and our girls!