Every apple recipe I made last year—and that's a long list—started out with fresh apples to which I applied some labor. Peel, yes or no depending on the recipe. Core, yes or no depending on the recipe. Slice, dice, or shred. Cook with spices. Discard something.
Bear in mind that my parents grew up during the Depression and raised me to be thrifty. I minimize my food waste as much as possible. What there is of it goes into the garden beds in the central composting square. I use the keyhole gardening technique, AKA dump food scraps into a space in the middle of the raised bed, let Mother Nature and Father Time do their thing. (My raised beds are rectangular, built by my Sweet Hubs from a kit, rather than the round shape most often illustrated. Compost happens either way.)
But why compost before you've gotten every last possible bit of use? Although there's such a thing as taking it a bit too far. I present my lessons learned for your entertainment and possible benefit.
A typical two-day cycle starts with the apples I glean from various roadside trees and pick up when a neighbor leaves a bag by the curb. (So really, it's a three-day cycle. Day one, collect apples.)
First, I use my handy-dandy apple corer without peeling and prep 8 lbs. of sliced apples to freeze for later use in apple-pear butter, or possibly this Apple Caramel Sauce from Food in Jars, which sounds scrumptious (recipe can be made using other fruits too!).
Put all the cores in a bag. Plenty of apple-ness left there that can be rendered into juice.
Use the apple corer with the peeler setting to slice another 4 pounds of apples, then dice those up to macerate overnight with sugar for Apple Cardamom Rosewater Jam. Throw the peels in the bag with the core; they carry pectin that will help the juice jell.
Simmer those cores and peels until soft with some ginger in preparation for Apple Ginger Jelly. I made this one last year and it's going on annual repeat. Set that up to drain overnight.
The next morning, discover that the apple juice is maybe a trifle bland. I really should have gotten fresh gingerroot, not just used the ginger paste from a tube that I had in the fridge. Okay, I can fix this, I still have pounds and pounds of apples. Quarter a bunch of the smaller ones and throw into the strained juice so it will reduce and pick up more appley goodness. Add more ginger paste. (Really should have biked to the store.)
Update on Apple Ginger Jelly: Sweet Hubs ended up running to the store and getting gingerroot. Sliced that up (the recipe calls for 3 oz. to go with 2 lbs. apples, and I had 3 lbs.) and simmered it in with the apples. Makes all the difference!
In the meantime, use my food mill to smoosh the cores and peels and squeeze out every bit of apple pulp I can. I figured I'd throw that into the future apple-pear butter, but hey, that looks a lot like applesauce! Granted, these apples have already given up some (most) of their flavor. Here comes the Maple Applesauce recipe from Food in Jars to the rescue, with its cinnamon sticks and maple for some extra flavor oomph.
But wait, those apples I added to the juice are also going to be nice and soft. Slow my roll on the applesauce plan until I can get those smooshed up too. Ideally they would drain for 6-8 hours per the recipe, but y'know, it's okay if some of the juice goes into the applesauce.
After tasting the apple mush, though, I decide it really has lost almost all its flavor. Even the addition of the apples that had more flesh and a tablespoon of lemon juice didn't really fix it.
At that point I have a few options: Blend up some blackberries with the bland applesauce and make fruit leather. Freeze this stuff in a muffin tin, which makes handy half-cup quantities, and save it to bake into future muffins and breads, recognizing they'll need more spice. Bake a batch of muffins or bread right now, for that matter. Or head into a fresh batch of applesauce with whole apples that I can mix this into and resist the urge to restart this whole circular economy again.
I do have an entire bike pannier full of apples still to process....
Clearly Indian Apple Chutney lies ahead. I made that last year and it tasted fantastic with some Cougar Gold aged white cheddar on a cracker. But not today. Chutney takes a while to cook and I have apple mush to deal with. That muffin tin of apple mush for the freezer sounds like the easiest way to go. I just have to label it with honesty: "Bland Applesauce 2025".
Recipes in this post
- Apple Caramel Sauce
- Apple Cardamom Rosewater Jam: Flavor notes to read before you make this!
- She says to cook 40 minutes minimum, longer for deeper color. I probably cooked twice as long to get it to a consistency that looked like jam and yet still had some apple bits. Cook for the texture you want in your jam.
- She calls for 5 cardamom pods. I used 8 pods and it was so subtle I couldn't taste it, but my pods were a bit old. Ended up adding something like 3/4 t. ground cardamom. Definitely a taste and adjust seasoning.
- She calls for 1 T. rosewater or "a splash". I appreciate subtle rosewater, but too much and it will taste like hand lotion for me. I started with 1/2 t., stirred in, let it cook a minute, tasted. Did this until I was at 1-1/2 t. rosewater, so half what she called for. Most definitely a taste and adjust seasoning.
- Apple Ginger Jelly: I didn't have fresh ginger root on hand (gasp!) so I used the ginger paste in a tube I find so, so handy. That really didn't cut it and I had to do make some amendments (add more apples and cook down more juice with gingerroot). Get fresh gingerroot.
- Maple Applesauce
- Indian Apple Chutney
- Making Taybarb: Tayberry Rhubarb Jam Recipe
- Canstravaganza! Food Preservation 2024
- Blackberry Apple Chutney Recipe
- Green Tomatoes. So Many Green Tomatoes.
- Apples, Apples, Apples!
- Zucchini Tomato Salsa (Everyone Needs Salsa, or, What to Do with a Really Giant Zucchini)
- Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes!
- Pears, Pears, Pears!
- Future Marmalade
- Vegan Cranberry Caramelized Red Onion Orange Chutney Recipe Experimentation
- Peach Elderberry Chutney: A Farmers’ Market Experiment
