Go WIld With Applesauce

Washing our wild apples in sink

I recently discovered the joys of homemade applesauce made with wild apples.

I'm allergic to apple skins so rarely eat apples as I'm too lazy to peel them! And store bought applesauce makes my mouth itchy. There are probably bits of skin in it and so I react.

So for me, applesauce wasn't a treat. Until now

We have about 20 wild apple trees on our hobby farm. This year hubs picked some and showed me how big and red they were. I couldn't bear to see them go to the piglets, so I hunted for applesauce recipes. I finally found one that was pretty good although far too sweet for our taste.

Hubs picks apples

Now mind you, the end product varies depending on the type of apples on the tree, so I can't blame the recipe. In any case I tweaked it slightly (much less sugar, a bit more water) and we love the final product.

Because we have so many apples this year, I froze some and made applesauce with the rest. Well, actually I'm not done yet.

One tree is Golden Delicious and it doesn't freeze well (too mushy) and likewise doesn't make the best applesauce. Hubs will probably just eat those. The rest are great for applesauce but I learned not to mix the apples from different trees. It's too difficult to get the sugar ratio just right!

Here's the tweaked recipe for applesauce, but if you use it, err with less sugar as you can always add more.  One little tip I learned was to dip the peeled and cut apples into Fruit Fresh to keep them from going brown. Otherwise by the time you are part-way through the peeling and chopping, the apples are brownish.

Peeling, coring, chopping apples

Oh, and at first we did all this by hand - what a chore!


Ingredients

16 wild apples (about 16 cups) peeled and cubed
2 1/4 cups water
3/4 cups sugar
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Progressive Apple Peeler

Toss this all together in a pot on the stove, bring to boil and simmer 15 to 20 minutes. Mash with potato masher when cool. I froze mine in small containers and it's delicious. It yields just over 4 cups of applesauce.

Then I bought a Progressive International Apple Peeler and Corer from Amazon.com which also cores and slices.

It clamps to our harvest table and this afternoon we prepared about a dozen apples in less than 10 minutes. Wow! What a time-saver.

Applesauce!

 And here's the final product - yummy applesauce from our wild apple trees.

Apples in freezer

To freeze the rest of the apples, I peeled them and cut them into thin wedges then put them in single layers on cookie sheets to freeze for about an hour.

Then I slid them off and put them in ziplock baggies. I plan to make apple pie, apple crumble and other yummy apple treats throughout the winter.