How to Make Homemade Applesauce, Easy Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What makes a good applesauce apple? ›

For a basic applesauce, use McIntosh and Golden Delicious apples. Golden Delicious is a soft apple variety with a mellow flavor, so it cooks down easily and provides a great foundation for your applesauce. McIntosh apples are slightly tart and crisp, but soften easily, making them a stellar choice for pies and sauces.

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.

Apple sauce is made by cooking apples with water or apple cider (fresh apple juice). More acidic apples will render a finer purée; the highly acidic Bramley apple creates a very fine purée. The apples may or may not be peeled. If they are not peeled, the peels and seeds are typically separated in a food mill.

If the applesauce is too thin, return it to the pot and cook it a bit longer, stirring often, until it's the consistency you like. Cooking the apples with the peels and cores extracts more pectin for an extra-silky sauce, plus it'll save you time.

Stay away from Red Delicious apples when making sauce. They don't mix well with heat and get undesirably mushy and unpalatable. If you're looking to add a little color to your sauce, keep the skin on while it cooks.

If you don't have time to wait for reduction, then the best method is to mix arrowroot or tapioca (or both) with a little bit of apple juice or apple cider. Use the resulting mixture as a thickening agent. Add it to the applesauce and let it stew. Before too long, the sauce will have thickened up nicely!

Don't be afraid to add spice—real spice—to your applesauce. Test kitchen assistant Brad Leone uses cayenne pepper and grated ginger, which both play well with cinnamon and nutmeg. Another way to add heat? Deputy editor Scott Desimon adds a splash of whiskey to wake it up.

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.

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.

And in case you're wondering, varieties like Honeycrisp, Fuji, and McIntosh are the best apples for applesauce. How long will homemade applesauce last? It'll stay good for four to six days stored in the fridge. You could also can it to make it last longer, but that's a lesson for another day.

What is the pink stuff in applesauce? ›

It gets its pretty pink colour from leaving the apple skins on during cooking, then the skins come out during the press.

A: Perhaps some apple seeds ended up being ground into the sauce? If the taste is fine, and there is no odor, then I would consider it a natural by-product of manufacture.

Sometimes we accidentally add too much water to our recipe, or the apples produce more juice than anticipated which leaves us with watery applesauce. Luckily, it is so easy to thicken homemade applesauce. We just need to cook it longer to help the water evaporate.

Making applesauce is not an all-day project. If it's cooking for much longer than 30-40 minutes, your apple pieces are too big, says Martinez. Aim for pieces that are 1"-2", and simmer at medium to medium-high heat, stirring occasionally so the sauce doesn't scorch.

You can make applesauce out of any apples, but if you have a choice, go with soft apples. They'll cook down faster and get you out of the kitchen sooner.

Applesauce. Select apples that are sweet, juicy, and crisp, such as Golden Delicious, Rome Beauty, Jonathan, Fuji, York Imperial, and McIntosh. For a tart flavor, add 1 to 2 pounds of tart apples to every 3 pounds of sweeter fruit (Table 1).

We hold our apples to a higher standard. That's why our No Sugar Added Applesauce is thick and golden, like the real, high quality apples they're made from.

Fuji and Golden delicious make a great combination for homemade unsweetened applesauce. We have a lot of apple festivals here in Portland so one of my favorite things to do is go and taste the apples and choose which ones I want to use to make my applesauce.