I've never canned applesauce because it does very well in the freezer, and if there is a lazy way to preserve food, I'll choose it every time! :)
What is great about freezing applesauce is that the process of making it does not require a big commitment of time; you can do up small batches as you get the time.
For instance, I have Jonathan apples that need to be used up or go in with the cider apples, so planned to make fried apples for lunch. When I started peeling the apples, I decided to go ahead and work up the half-peck basket that I had brought into the kitchen with a new plan to put a container of chunky sauce in the freezer.
For this method, I peeled and quartered the apples. I put them in a deep stainless steel fry pan with a small amount of water to prevent the apples from sticking to the bottom of the pan. I set the pan on low heat to get the apples started; when the natural juices began to cook out of the apples, I turned the heat up a little bit.While I was making the rest of the lunch, I moseyed over to the stove every now and again to stir the apples. By the time lunch was ready, the whole batch of apples were cooked.
Because these Jonathans were a bit old and not kept in cold storage, some of them cooked down to a nice sauce consistency, so I forgot all about fried apples and took a potato masher to the whole pan. A taste test resulted in some serious **YUM**. To take the sauce to a higher level, all I need to do was mix in about two teaspoons of real can sugar into the entire batch.
This yielded one quart for the freezer, the rest I divided between our lunch plates.
See how quick and easy that was?
More than often, I make applesauce a different way: forgoing the peeling. This involves running the apples through a sieve, so when I make sauce that way I do dedicate a few hours to the process. But still, I freeze my tasty results!
Marcheta *hitting the sauce
I made applesauce last weekend! I love it. Tastiest thing on earth. I have canned before, but used the freezer this time as it is so much quicker. I love reading your blog! We are kindred spirits, I dream and dream of owning a small homestead and living more sustainably. Just need to figure out how to do it in Boston and also have a reasonable commute to work!
ReplyDeleteKristin (Bates) McElderry
Kristin, is there anything such as a 'reasonable commute' to Boston? LOL..I have never been there but have seen news reports.
DeleteThank you for your nice response. When Jim and I lived in a second floor apartment, my 'garden' was a small container herb garden on our tiny, well, I guess you could call it a balcony. When we lived in town, our yard was small, but the herb garden was able to move out of pots and became part of our kitchen door landscaping.
When we moved to our acreage, Jim designed and built a lovely raised bed herb garden of four triangles. The paths were made from a silo that was taken down. That garden was lovely for a long time, but got away from me when I was recovering from a neck injury. It has now become
Ava's flower garden, a salad garden, a mint garden, and one section is still for herbs.
But mostly my herbs are in pots on our porch. I see a cycle here, do you? (smiles).
Herbs are easy to grow in pots. If you don't already do this, maybe next spring you can have a nice container garden of herbs, fresh for cooking.
And, hold on to your dreams. That is how life is built: one dream at a time.
Hugs,
Marcheta