Preserving the Harvest: Apples

This post contains affiliate links and I may be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links. Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases through them as well.
Preserving Apples - ahumbleplace.com

Azure Standard has, what I think is, a pretty good deal on juice-grade organic apples. I’ve been looking for something like this to make some apple chips and apple sauce, so I picked up a crate with November’s order. The last two weeks have been dotted with little bouts of preserving the fruit and we’re almost through the entire batch. Of course, they’re being eaten almost faster than I can make them, but hopefully we’ll have something left over to snack on for a while. 🙂

20core

I picked up one of these on Craigslist a while back (ironically, it happened to be from the woman who hosts our CSA pickup) for $10. It was invaluable for this…not only did it make the whole process a lot faster, B found it completely fascinating. So much so that I couldn’t get him to stop touching it (sharp blade included)!

I removed the skins for the sauce but not for the chips. It’s all personal preference, though.

20slices

As these were “juice grade,” there was a little more work than there would’ve been if they were whole (I had to cut out a lot of black bits :|), but considering the price, I can’t complain.

20dried

For the chips, I dehydrated them for 8 hours at 135° (I have this dehydrator). This leaves a malleable but still tough slice of apple….maybe “chip” isn’t the right word, but it’s easier to say than “malleable dried apple slices.” 🙂 Doesn’t get much easier than that.

For the sauce, I just put the spirals of apples in a large dutch oven and added 1 tsp of cinnamon (this is optional) and 1 cup of water per every ten apples, then let it simmer for a half hour. I then removed them with a slotted spoon, dropped them in the food processor and pulsed until I got the desired texture. Voila! We enjoyed fresh apple sauce for a few days and froze the rest.

Now to get through those last few apples….

Similar Posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *