Making and Canning Applesauce

Making applesauce is pretty easy to do, if a bit time consuming. It does work out to be a fair bit cheaper than buying even the cheapest of applesauce though. 1/2 bushel cost me $12, and gave me 18 x 500ml jars of applesauce. The home made stuff seems to be a lot thicker than the commercial stuff, so there is probably even more apple per unit volume.

Just cut the apples in quarters, and then the core can easily be trimmed out of each quarter. Leave the skins on since there are lots of vitamins there. For a half bushel you'll need a 15L pot like mine in this video. Start out with your 1 cup of lemon juice, and keep the heat on 3 or 4 for the first 20 minutes, and turn it down to 2 after that. Just keep adding the apples as you cut them up, and give it a good, deep stir after every 5 or 10 apples.

You can boiling-water-bath applesauce. The books say that at sea level, process for 20 minutes for 1 pint / 500 ml jars.