Home Canned Applesauce

Despite the fact that I have been focusing on home canning tomato products, other home canned products tend to get processed at the same time.  I took a bit of a breather from tomatoes to do a batch of applesauce.  This type of break serves as both a mental and physical change in pace.  A mental break in processing one type of produce helps to stimulate your creative thoughts so it is not uncommon to decide to process some type of sauce rather than just the plain product when you return to processing it.  A physical break helps to prevent repetitive stress injuries.  Each type of produce has specific methods of preparation, some of which (eg. seeding tomatoes) can cause repetitive stress injuries that can range from mild to severe and lingering.  It is best to avoid or minimize the impact of these types of injuries whenever possible.

Apples are just starting here so I picked up a 10 lb bag of Courtland apples at the local orchard.  I am so excited they decided to open this year!  They sold the orchard to a rather seedy character who took off in the middle of the night leaving them to clean up the financial mess he left behind.  They are in their late 70's so I really didn't expect they would re-open this year.

Applesauce is very easy to home can.  I simply wash then quarter the apples and put just enough water into a large saucepan to prevent sticking.  Once the apples are soft, I run them through the Kitchen Aid food strainer to remove the skins, seeds and core.  I do not add any sugar or flavouring to my home canned applesauce.  The reason being is I use applesauce as an ingredient for baking so plain works better for this purpose.  Applesauce made this way will take on a hint of colour from the skins of the apples as well as the flesh so the sauce will be a pale yellowish as this one was to having a slight pinky tinge.  I experienced a bit of separation in this batch of applesauce.  That can happen.  I simply stir the applesauce after opening the jar.