Wednesday, October 14, 2009

How Do You Like Them Apples?

Russell's grandparents have an apple orchard up in New Harmony and this year they grew a ton of apples. Russell and I took home two full boxes so we could make applesauce and also dry some for apple chips.
This is just one of the boxes of apples. Little did we know, applesauce takes FOREVER to make. First, we had to cut and core all of apples. Then we boiled them in this huge pot.

After boiling the apples, the hard part began...the mashing. Because we didn't want chunky applesauce, we used a colander to mash the apples. If we do make more applesauce, we will just use a blender and make chunky applesauce because the using the colander to mash took so long.

This pot was full of apples and you would think that would make a lot of applesauce but after we finished mashing the apples, we only filled a pot a third of this size with apple pulp. That in turn produced 6.5 pint jars of applesauce.


The applesauce turned out really good but it just seemed like a lot of work for not many jars. Oh well the apples were free.

We dried the second box of apples to make apple chips. They turned out good too.
I have been learning a lot about home canning lately. It is kind of fun to make your own food storage!

2 comments:

The Nielson Bunch said...

mmmmmm...that applesauce looks good. We got a bunch of apples off the tree in our front yard and I was drying them in my mom's dryer until it died.:( I have been trying to find other ways to use them up and applesauce would be a good idea. If you have any left I have a good apple crisp recipe. :)

Cami and Phil said...

Wow thats so cool! I want to make my own applesauce someday! My Mother in law is moving in, and she is a canning fanatic! I am so excited to learn!