Applesauce Tutorial - no peeling necessary!

We had the wonderful opportunity to pick apples at a private orchard this fall. Friends of my parents had grown a bumper crop and could not "possibly use any more." We went on a rainy Saturday and picked about a bushel and a half of cortland and honey crisp apples. They had been sprayed twice during the season and while not organic, they were as close as we could find locally and they were free! We had experimented a little earlier this fall making sauce with apples from our own tree and unfortunately overcooked it in our slow cooker. We later salvaged that batch by making apple butter. We also did a test batch in our pressure cooker and liked how that turned out but getting the skins out of the sauce with a strainer was time consuming. For my birthday I requested an attachment for my KitchenAid that would make applesauce and tomato sauce a breeze. The foodmill attachment hooks onto the grinder and seperates the sauce from the solids (ie skins). The end result was a bright pink sauce that was both sweet and tart. It's a good thing it's frozen in small batches or it might already have disapeared :)

Step 1:

Wash the apples. I used a scrub brush dipped in baking soda. The baking soda does an excellent job at removing dirt and waxy coatings (if using store bought apples).

Step 2:

Cut the apples into fourths. Leave the skin on. Discard cores.

Step 3:

Place apples in pressure cooker basket. Add approximately 2 cups of water. Start pressure cooker. After pot has pressurized, cook for 4 minutes. When time is up depressurize using your usual method (I run cold water over the pot in the sink until the pressure drops). Apples should look like this, they do move out of the basket. Use a slotted spoon to scoop apple solids out of the water in the bottom of the cooker. Cool for a bit.

Step 4: Turn KitchenAid to setting 4 and feed pressure cooked apple mix through the grinder/mill. The mill separates the sauce from the solids. We emptied the sauce into a large stock-pot to cool further and to mix all of our batches together (as to get the most consistent sauce). The bowls of "solids" were discarded in our compost bin. After cooling, we froze the sauce. The bushel and a half of apples yielded just over 4 gallons of applesauce, 15 cups of diced apples (frozen in baggies for making muffins over the winter), and a dozen apples for eating whole.