The Secret to Homemade Applesauce
The secret to my dad’s applesauce is that he adds a couple strips of lemon peel to the apples, as well as some lemon juice or apple cider vinegar, while they are cooking. The tartness of the lemon or vinegar serves to intensify the taste of the apples, and helps balance out the sweetness of the sauce. The result is a refreshing, utterly delicious applesauce.
Make It Your Own: Add Other Fruits
He also likes to mix other fruit in with the sauce. He’ll mix fresh cranberries in with the apples for cranberry applesauce, or stalks of rhubarb for rhubarb applesauce. Plums and pluots sometimes find their way into his applesauce too. For more information on which apple varieties are best for baking, check out our Guide to Apples.
Love Apples? Try These Recipes
Apple Pie Pressure Cooker Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal Triple Apple Snack Cake Apple Cobbler Baked Apples
Cooking the apples with the peels and cores extracts more pectin for an extra-silky sauce, plus it’ll save you time.
Turn It into Apple Butter
Applesauce is the basis for apple butter. Once you make this, you have the start for our amazing apple butter, since apple butter is just a more concentrated, more sweetened version of smooth apple sauce.
In place of the ground cinnamon, you can cook the apples with a stick of cinnamon, just remove it before puréeing. To prep the apples, use a sharp vegetable peeler or paring knife and cut away the outer peel. Then, quarter the apple and use a paring knife to cut out the tough core parts from the quarters. Or use an apple peeler corer. You might want to start with half the sugar at this point and add more to taste later. Use a potato masher to mash the cooked apples in the pot to make a chunky applesauce. For a smoother applesauce you can either run the cooked apples through a food mill, or purée them using a stick blender or a standing blender. (If using a standing blender, do small batches, and do not fill the blender bowl more than halfway.) If not sweet enough, add more sugar to taste. If too sweet, add more lemon juice. Freezes well and will last at least 1 year in a cold freezer. If you freeze it, make sure to allow enough headroom (at least 1 inch) in your jar for expansion.
