How to Make Homemade Applesauce, Easy Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What are the best apples for homemade applesauce? ›

The best apples for applesauce are whatever apples you have on hand and need to use up. However, if you have a choice, we recommend using a combination of sweet and tangy varieties for the best flavor. Popular sweet varieties include Honeycrisp and Fuji, while popular tangy varieties include Granny Smith and Braeburn.

Homemade applesauce can be refrigerated for a week to ten days; it can also be frozen or canned for longer-term storage. Mott's recommends its applesauce to be used within ten days of opening. First let me introduce our panel.

The mellow sweetness of toasted sugar adds complexity. Apple cider vinegar helps brighten cooked fruit. Using skin-on fruit improves both flavor and color in the finished product. Aromatics like cinnamon, orange peel, and rose water intensify the flavor of the apples.

It doesn't just smell good—it tastes good too! It's tangy, lightly sweet, and full of spiced apple flavor. You can make it chunky if you like your applesauce with some texture, or you can blend it if you want it totally smooth. Either way, it's delicious.

Low in vitamins and minerals

Manufacturers often add extra vitamin C to commercially made applesauce to help preserve the color. Homemade applesauce could also be higher in vitamin C if either lemon juice or other fruits that contain vitamin C are added. Applesauce provides a limited amount of vitamins and minerals.

For applesauce, you essentially want the opposite—apples that will cook down and mash well to create a flavorful sauce. At the same time, avoid apples that are mealy in texture and turn to mush when cooked down. Many cooks avoid Red Delicious for that reason.

Peel, core and quarter apples. You will need 3 to 3-1/2 pounds per quart of applesauce.

If you leave the skins on, you'll end up with pink applesauce, like mine, if you've used red apples. You'll want to puree the applesauce if you've left the skins on and strain it, otherwise, it can get “stringy” and I don't care for that texture.

Not only does the homemade version taste better, but it's way cheaper, too. We call that a win-win! Making homemade applesauce is a great way to use up that big bag of apples that's been sitting in your fridge for two weeks. (It's okay… we all do it.)

Once frozen and popped out of your Souper Cubes trays, and transferred to freezer bags, it will last up to 6 months in the freezer - even longer if it is vacuum sealed! To thaw, remove the cube of applesauce from the freezer, and place into a bowl.

Does homemade applesauce go bad? ›

After you have popped the seal and placed your opened jar of apple sauce in the fridge, it will stay fresh for anywhere between 7-14 days. Homemade apple sauce has a shorter shelf life, ranging from 4-6 days.

Peel and core apples if you plan to simply mash them into chunky applesauce. Leave the peels on if you're going to pass the cooked pieces through a food mill, which will separate the skin and seeds from the apple mash. Leaving the skin on while the apple cooks also adds color to the sauce.

Many people report that the top of the jar of applesauce gradually turns brown. What is happening is the sauce has not been heated adequately to stop all enzymatic reactions and there is enough oxygen in the headspace to react with the enzymes.

Digestive Health

The soluble fiber in applesauce, in the form of pectin, can be helpful in treating digestive issues, such as diarrhea and constipation. It can help to neutralize the effects of irritable bowel syndrome. Pectin also acts as a prebiotic, which feeds good gut bacteria and promotes good digestive health.

Apple juice is a fruit juice made by the maceration and pressing of an apple.

This process is called osmosis, and it dilutes the sugar-water inside the cells. But all the water coming in raises the pressure inside the cells so that eventually, the cell walls burst. That helps break down the apple into an even, golden sauce, which you can sweeten after cooking.

Upon arrival at the plant, apples go through a process that involves inspection, washing, removal of seeds, skin, carpal and the stems, cooking and then packaging into 25 varieties of Mott's natural, organic and fruit-flavored applesauce and natural apple juice.

Applesauce, in its simplest form, is cooked apples. As such, it has many of the same incredible nutrients that fresh whole apples have. There are many varieties of applesauce available. Some contain nothing more than apples, water, and ascorbic acid.