Ingredients
3 lb. apples, peeled, cored, and thinly sliced, such as honeycrisp, gala, and granny smith (about 7 apples)
1/2 c. water
Juice of 1/2 lemon
2 cinnamon sticks or 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp. kosher salt
Preparation
Step 1Add apples to a large crockpot and top with water, lemon juice, cinnamon sticks, and salt and stir. Step 2Cover and cook on high for 4 hours. Step 3Stir the apples to break them up, smashing as needed. For a smoother applesauce, use an immersion blender and blend until desired consistency.
What makes preparing applesauce at home better than just buying some from the store is that you get to decide how sweet and what additional flavors you want to ad. In this recipe we didn’t include any sugar because we like the sweetness levels that our apples brought. We used a mix of honeycrisp, galas, and granny smith apples. This allows us to not only enjoy as is, but in our baked goods, like this applesauce cake, without worrying about adding too much extra sugar. If you want to add sugar you can do so at the beginning or wait and stir some in at the end so that you can taste and adjust as you like! We’d recommend starting with 1/2 cup of sugar. Additionally we kept it simple and added just a couple of cinnamon sticks to impart the flavor we’re looking for. But, you could also throw in some cloves, grate in a bit of fresh nutmeg or even add some citrus zest. Have you tried this yet? Let us know how it went in the comments below!
