Preserving Applesauce and Apple Butter

In November, I took a trip to our local Minnesota orchard and bought three bags of apples. I didn’t make any applesauce or apple butter last year, and we were out of both things.

I brought them home and as I reviewed my recipes and weighed them with my kitchen scale, I realized I was just a bit short. So, I made one quick rushed trip back for “just one more” bag (not shown in photo) right before they closed for the day. Days like this are when I’m glad to live in a small town, and happy the orchard is only a few minutes away!

Washing the Apples

So, my four bags of apples were a combination of two varieties – Zestar and Regent, if I remember correctly. The first thing I did was get two washbasins in the sink and put baking soda with the water to wash the apples.

Some recent studies have shown a mixture of just 1 ounce of baking soda to 100 ounces of water to be the most effective way of removing pesticides from produce. So, I put all these beauties in a bath for a while.

Peeling the Apples

After the apples were done bathing, I weighed the apples again and separated them into two batches – one for the applesauce and one for the apple butter. My husband helped me peel all of them with our apple peeler.

As he peeled them, I started each batch cooking.  For the applesauce, I’m not sure what I was thinking but I filled my stainless steel stockpot full of sliced apples. Shortly after, I realized I couldn’t stir them properly in this packed pot, and it was actually already starting to scorch on the bottom.

The Applesauce

We made a quick switch over to the electric roaster, which worked great!

We use this roaster often throughout the year because we make our own “lunch meat” by roasting whole hams, turkeys, turkey breasts, roast beef, and more. It is especially helpful in the summertime when our non-air-conditioned home is HOT. We just use the roaster outside and keep the house cool.

The Apple Butter

For the apple butter, I cooked the apples down in my slow cooker. This also works well.

I used Ball Fresh Preserving recipes for both the applesauce and for the apple butter, but I halved the amount of sugar used for both. I always make all of my fruit preserves with about half as much sugar as the recipe calls for. For my jams, I manage this by using Pomona’s Pectin.

We replaced regular refined cane sugar in our house last year with Zulka sugar. It is minimally processed, non-GMO, pure cane sugar that doesn’t contain bone char. I used it in my applesauce. I’d love to find their brown sugar and use it also – but for my apple butter, I just used regular dark brown sugar from the grocery store.

Memories of the Farm

When I was a little girl, I spent a lot of Saturdays and summer days at the farm with my grandparents. There was an apple tree in the backyard. My grandma and I would get up in the bucket of the loader tractor and grandpa would lift us up into the tree to pick apples. I was safe, I’m sure of it.

My grandma always made her applesauce extra chunky, and not very sweet. So, that is exactly how I like to make mine.  I was really pleased with how this batch turned out. In the past when I’ve made it, it always ends up cooking down too much, and I lose all chunkiness. I must have had the right combination of apples this year that let me keep some apple chunks in my sauce.

I’ve got lots of memories of that farm, which later became my family’s full-time home. I wrote a bit more about the farm in this rhubarb post. I also did a quick video from the farm this summer if you’d like to check it out!

The Finished Product

Since I had so many apples, it ended up being double batches of both things, and I ended up with 16 pints of applesauce and 12 half-pints of apple butter.

My jars of applesauce ended up with sauce all the way up to the lid, without really any headspace remaining. Apparently, this is common with applesauce, and it’s okay safety-wise. However, next time I would leave more headspace before processing to prevent this.

A bonus to my applesauce and apple butter-making extravaganza? This also fulfilled my entry for the Food in Jars challenge for November. You can see more ways to preserve apples in this Food in Jars blog post.

What’s your favorite way to enjoy fresh apples from your local orchard? Tell us about it in the comments below!