Apple Preserving

It has been several years since I made fresh apple sauce or preserved food for our family. With the new farm and life here the kids have begged to start making apple sauce again. I blogged about the orchard here. I had 4 bushels of apples purchased, 1 bushel of each kind of apple. After a month of slowly working on the 4 bushels of apples here is what we accomplished.

The first day I spent 9 hours in the kitchen making apple sauce. We used about 2 1/2 bushels total this day. The kids were remote learning in school, but during breaks were able to help. A total of 40 quarts of apple sauce was finished. There was 1 jar lost in the hot water bath. And I left 4 quarts of sauce to make apple butter later.

Also, during the same day I sliced enough apples (with the KitchenAid Spiralizer) to run 1 round of dehydrated apples. (over the next few weeks we made a total of 5 quarts of dried apples).

When the apples were done cooking we had 1 gallon of apple juice left to save and make Jelly later.

At the end of the day we had about 1 1/2 bushel left that was either eaten fresh or to create more food later.

Day 2 of preserving accomplishments was Apple Butter. The 4 quarts of apple sauce was cooked down in the crockpot all day and made a total of 7 1/2 pints.

Day 3 of preserving I cooked 1/2 gallon of apple juice and made pepper jelly. It created a small portion of 1 1/2 pints. There was another 1/2 gallon of apple juice a few days ago, but the family thought it was just good to drink straight.

Day 4 of preserving was making apple pie filling. I used my amazing Spiralizer and sliced enough apples to freeze 5 quarts and 1 quart saved to make a pie. You can find the Apple Pie recipe HERE.

So nice to see the freezer and pantry shelves filling up with the hard work from the summer.