Applesauce

This is something I haven't made in a few years.  Timewise it's not that much of a job, but it is an involved process.  First the apples have to be cut up, then heated, then processed, then seasoned (sugar and/or cinnamon), and finally canned.  All of this requires coordination of stove space, pots (including the washing thereof), and processes to keep everything moving smoothly with minimal bottlenecks.

Apples need to be pulped, and for that, they need to be heated.  The other thing I use the food mill for is peach butter, and when pulping those, it can be done raw.  Raw peaches are tough but doable.  Raw apples are not.  So they need to be cut up and thrown into a pot to cook a bit.  The first time I made applesauce, I tossed the whole thing into the pot, just quartering it.  Now I use an apple slicer and pitch the core.

There is some apple pulp that gets lost when sacrificing the core, but I do it this way for a few reasons:  First, getting the seeds out is a help.  They just contribute to the mess in the mill.  Second, the area around the stem is likely to be dirty and have pesticide and herbicide residue (I wash them off to some degree, but washing thoroughly in the stem area would be troublesome).  Third, the cores often have problems--apples often begin to decay in the core area before the rest of the apple suffers any loss in quality.  Using an apple slicer also makes the process pretty quick, and cuts the apples into relatively narrow pieces for heating.

As a side note, the slicer above didn't last very long.  I got it to handle big apples, which it worked well for--for the first 100 or so apples.  Then it broke, forcing me back to my other slicer that is smaller and does eight slices.

Once sliced, they go into the pots for heating.  There's no need to dunk them in a vitamin C or citric acid solution to prevent browning as I do when preparing apples for dehydrating.

The heating phase is the most difficult logistically.  The apples will break down rapidly as they heat, but initially, for 8 quarts of sauce, about 25-30 quarts of heating capacity are needed.  I put a little water in the bottom of the pots to limit sticking (the apples themselves will contribute more as they cook down), and turn the pile over frequently to heat the slices on top.

It can take a while to heat them, maybe 20 minutes, and at that point there will probably still be a few slices on top that are hard.  Trying to mill them is an exercise in frustration.  I just toss back any that are hard and let them continue to heat.

Soft slices pulp almost immediately.  The peels don't break down and have to be removed frequently while milling.

Milling enough apples for eight quarts of sauce takes a while.  Probably a half bushel, roughly 20 pounds raw or even a bit more, are needed for that amount of sauce, and much of that ends up being cores and peels, i.e., waste (unless you have rabbits, chickens, or other animals that might like the tailings).  All of the fiber is apparently in the skin; applesauce itself has almost no fiber.

 

 At any rate, I just hook the mill on top of a large pot and periodically transfer the sauce back to one of the pots--once I have one emptied of cooked slices--for seasoning.  I don't add sugar.  This batch of sauce was about 2/3 Stayman and 1/3 Goldrush, with a few Arkansas Blacks tossed in.  I added a little over two tablespoons of Ceylon cinnamon as the only seasoning.  Having the sauce in a pot facilitates heating it back up--it will have cooled during milling--before ladling it into the jars.

Once the other pot is emptied of apple slices, it has to be moved off the stove to make room for the canner.  While the canner is heating up, the jars can be prepped.  Applesauce is one thing that regular-mouth jars work well for; I have a mix of those and wide-mouth in inventory.

The remaining processing step is simply to fill the jars, leaving 1/2" headspace, and processing.  The National Center for Home Food Preserving recommends 25 minutes for hot sauce (I'm over 1000 feet in elevation), but if the sauce isn't really hot, I go 35--and I use atmospheric (non-pressurized) steam canning, as noted previously. Pickyourown.org recommends the same processing time.

That's it.  Acidifying is unnecessary; the pH of the finished sauce is about 3.5, well below the 4.6 threshold.  Three big pots--16 quart and 20 quart stock pots plus the canner--are involved, along with the mill, bowls for sauce, small pot for the lids, funnel, jar lifter, spoons, etc. Cleanup requires time and coordination just like the earlier steps. It ends up looking close to the cartoon I posted before, but it's all good in the end. Total time for all of the above was about four hours (including cleanup).

Addendum:  Here's something interesting.  I did two batches this year; the first one was Stayman and Goldrush, as noted above; the second batch was Arkansas Black, Cameo, and a few Goldrush apples.  The color of the sauce was different; it had a red blush to it.  Shown below is the second batch by itself and then in a composite that includes the first batch (already shown above).