Applesauce Season

It's applesauce season! Quite possibly my favorite time of year. I didn't grow up with homemade applesauce, but when I joined Aaron's family I quickly realized what I had been missing all of my life. His grandma made deliciously smooth applesauce with Gravenstein apples every year and I have continued the tradition since my first year as a Schrader.

Our kids look forward to this every fall. I really love traditions, and our oldest is finally getting old enough to recognize that we have some! We drive to Hood River, Oregon sometime around the first week or so of September in search of apples. Because we buy a lot of apples to turn into sauce (120 pounds this year!), we typically always go with what they refer to as juicing apples. They are the ones that aren't pretty enough to get sold at full price, but still delicious enough for the recipes that don't require a good looking apple. Gravenstein apples are for sure our favorites, but at the fruit stand we buy from we know that the juicing apples consists of all kinds of varieties, including Gravensteins, so it's definitely a more affordable option.

Our method of making and putting up applesauce is one that can include even our two year old, so grab some apples, your tools, some aprons and your kids and put this on your to-do list for fall!

The first thing I do is clean my sink and run it half way full of cool water. I add as many apples as can comfortably fit to give them a good rinse before putting them into the pan to cook.

Once they've soaked for a few minutes I start preparing the apples to be cooked down. My husband only grew up on smooth applesauce, so that is what we have always made. It has become my favorite as well, and the only kind our kids know. To get the smoothest applesauce possible we use this sieve. What I love about making smooth applesauce with a sieve like this, is that you don't have to peel or core any of your apples. You just quarter (or smaller if your apples are huge) the apples and throw it all into the pot.

Add about 1/8 cup of water to your pot to keep the apples from burning to the bottom. Cook them down on medium low until the apples are soft enough to manually mash, making sure to stir often. Once they are cooked down enough you can throw it into your sieve and begin to mash! You know you're done mashing when all that's left in your sieve is a bunch of cooked peels, seeds and cores.

Then we take a quick break to sneak an apple because there's boxes and boxes of them sitting around the house and nobody's watching. ;)

Once you have a large bowl full of the mashed applesauce, add cinnamon and sugar to taste. Depending on the kinds of apples you end up using, sometimes the addition of sugar isn't even necessary. I haven't added sugar to our applesauce in years, however even when I have needed to, it's not more than 1/4 cup to a very large bowl.

We freeze all of our applesauce instead of canning it because we just think it tastes more fresh that way. So we ladle it into freezable containers and then clear out the freezer so there is room!

Happy fall!

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