Cook: Homemade Applesauce 101

Hello!

I just realized I still haven't posted pictures from Sunset magazine's Savor the Central Coast. But let me make a quick cooking blurb since I went apple picking nearly a week ago.  My grandparents have about 4 apple trees in their backyard.  One is grafted to produce red delicious and golden apples.  Two are fuji and the last is another golden apple tree.  Yum.  My favorite fruit in the entire world is apples.  I swear to you.  I could eat it for days, and I did when I was in elementary school.  Best snack ever!  My grandma is overwhelmed by all these apples and settles to make the damaged ones into applesauce.  Epic.  She taught me and now I share with you.  No additional sugar needed!  Super healthy treat.

1. Pick and wash apples. From your local farmers market or the grocery store.  Too bad you don't get any kind of discount for bruised apples. Shucks.

Golden Delicious apples fresh from Gparents garden

2. Don't mind the bruises.  Just cut out where those sneaky worms got to. Keep the skins on!  You're going to steam them with it on.  Remove the seeds and stem so they look something like this....

No seeds, no stems, no worms!

3. Place into a steam proof bowl and place that into a very large pot on a steamer stand.  It's ok for the water to touch the bottom of the bowl.  The only place you DON'T want water is in the bowl with the apples.

4. Put on the lid and set the flame to med-high heat.  Steam for about 30min.  I only used 3 apples but I still needed a considerable amount of time.  You're looking for the apple skins to slough off easily.  Turn off the flame when you do that. (I learned the hard way and got a steam burn from being too eager. sad day.)  Remove as much of the skins as you can.

5. WHISK. Or CHOPSTICK.  My grandma does the chopstick way but I found that took longer.  Whisking is speedy and makes the applesauce smoother.  Yum...It should look like this.  I like my applesauce chunky but I supposed if you want it smoother, feed it to the food processor.  Good luck!

No skins, chunky applesauce! YUM!