Day 87: Homemade Applesauce

Applesauce is one of the most healthy comfort foods you can eat.

When I was growing up, we had a tree in our backyard that produced a healthy amount of apples. Come the beginning of summer, little green buds appeared on the branches. By August and September, big, juicy apples were falling from the tree. We would harvest them and my mom would spend about three days making jars and jars of pure applesauce.

No store-bought jar even measured made up to that applesauce. There are also the problems of added sugars, flavors and preservatives. Making my own applesauce ensured that only the sugars in the sauce would be natural  sugars in the apples themselves. The finished sauce would contain only apples and cinnamon.

Ingredients

About 6 large apples (Honeycrips, Fugi or other sweet variety)

1 Tablespoon cinnamon

Yield: About 3 cups

Directions

I used a revised technique based on the Living a Naturally Healthy, Happy Life way of stewing tomatoes. Instead of slaving away skinning apples (and losing a lot of fruit along the way), I used the powers on heat and pressure. I sliced the apples in eighths, cored them and cooked them in a pressure cooker for 20 minutes. They looked like the photo at right.

Using rubber gloves. I separated the skin from the rest of the fruit while the apples were still hot. This was very easy and took about 5 minutes.

I put the soft apple fruit into a bowl, mixed it with cinnamon and mashed it with a potato masher. Since the fruit was already very cooked, it wasn’t hard to mash it. I probably could have done the job with a spoon.

Results

Good applesauce with just enough spice. I found it more satisfying when served hot. Hubbs likes his cold, and he said it was slimy (as opposed to mealy).

I consider it a success! It’s probably more expensive that buying a bottle of applesauce, but it doesn’t take a lot of time or effort, and it doesn’t have artificial flavors, colors or preservatives.