Apple Crates

You may recall from my post a few days back, Apple Sauce Day 2015, a picture of the back of my truck with a bunch of apples in it.  I had some buckets, a tote and an apple crate I borrowed from my neighbor...

Apple Crate on the left...

He somehow got his hands on one from an orchard and copied the design to make one for himself.  He did a pretty good job and made it from scrap 2x4's and did a nice job too!  He let me borrow these things and now I'm looking at building some of my own. Alas, one thing I do miss about living in the city is dumpster diving in the new subdivisions for lumber!  I made some pretty sweet tree forts from scrounged lumber, including a loft bed in high school...  anyway, I'll have to see if I can borrow a table saw from somebody and rip up some 2x4's sometime soon!

On note, this may be a little more long term, as archery season just opened up on the 27th of Sept. and I have yet to make it out!

Apple Sauce Day, 2015!

For about the past 5 years now it seems I have roved about, knocking on doors and such, in an attempt to scrounge up free apples.  Well ever since we moved to the property, about two years back, I have been keeping my eye out for apples.  I have quite a list of different locations for apple tree's in case we should have trouble, but this year we had no trouble at all finding a good source of apples! 
Fortunately for us, we have multiple neighbors with multiple trees.  This year we went North and filled up the truck with apples in a very short time... shown is a mix of Jonathan and Macintosh apples, with the majority being the later.

5 Gallons down, a whole bunch to go!

I know everyone probably does it a little different, but I thought I'd detail for you how we make our sauce.

STEP 1 - Quarter, Clean and Sort

This one is pretty simple and straight forward... well, they all are in my opinion.  ANYWAY... sharpen those knives, grab a cutting board and get down to it! 

Apple Quartering Party!  (A great family working experience)

This step is kinda neat as it is something the whole family can do.  Now if your age group is a little bottom heavy, there might not be as many jobs for the yungsters, but they can still help.  Shown above, my eldest is making sure everyone has enough apples to quarter while those who are mature enough quartered the apples and cut out any bruises and bugs.  The simply bad apples were quickly tossed into the compost bucket along with any of the bad parts trimmed off.  The rest of the quarters were tossed into a bucket, awaiting the cooking.

STEP 2 - Cook

In the past we would fill up our stock pots / soup pots and slooooooowly cook the apples - that was boring.  Then one year I went out and got a pressure canner with some birthday $'s and haven't looked back since!  The one pictured below is the All American 921, I think... it can hold 7 quarts, so if you are interested, you can figure it out here or on Amazon here (I don't have affiliate links).

Cook'n with gas...

Pictured above, I was trying to get things out of the wind.  I eventually moved to the garage and left the door partially open.  It was much easier to see when it was venting steam when it was inside as well.

The process started with filling up the caner with apples after I add about an inch of water to the bottom.  I didn't bother to use the canning rack under the apples, but it might have prevented one batch from burning!  After I seal it up I set it on the turkey burner, let the steam vent for a few minutes, then put the pressure weight on at 5psi.  Once the weight starts to jiggle I turn off the heat and within a half hour I'm done cooking and it looks like this:

Soft, cooked apples...

 STEP 3 - Strain (the apples, not your back)

I put up a post titled Food Mills vs Food Strainers not too long ago, so you can read that one to get an idea of how that works.  But needless to say, that's what I use to separate the skin, the seeds, the core and all the nasty stuff from the pulp of the apple.  It sends the nasty stuff out the end and lets the good stuff go down the slide into whatever you have to catch it.  Below you can see two of them set up and ready to go (I got one at a garage sale for $10 after I purchased the first one).  We ended up not needing the second, as the cooking and canning ended up being the primary bottle neck's in the process... which was primarily due to none of the helpers being confident in the ability to do that work correctly.

STEP 4 - Season

For this part of the process, it sure helps to have a large stock pot... the one I have holds about 21quarts and is made of stainless steel.  Aluminum is cheaper, but I worry about the acid reacting with the aluminum and consuming too much of it... besides, it was a Christmas present!

UPDATE AND CONFESSION:  The pressure caner is made of Aluminum... if I'm worried about the Aluminum in the stock pot, I should be worried about it in the caner as well... ok, that's all.

At this stage of the process we dump the sauce from the strainer into the stock pot.  When we get maybe 15quarts or so, we dump in cinnamon and vanilla to taste.  I used to put cloves in as well, but somebody's blood work came back indicating a food intolerance to cloves, so we left that out this year.

STEP 5 - Can

Water bath canning is a lot of work if you are doing it by yourself.  One thing that I had this year that I have not had in the past is a 8oz ladel (I could have sworn it was a 16oz) for filling jars... but beware, after a lot of use, the one I linked to would have better served me with rounded edges, as the flat edges started digging into my hand.  That said, water bath canning is alright to use on apple sauce as they have enough acid to prevent butulism... don't water bath can low acid foods and meats, use the pressure caner!

A typical water bath setup... with an added reflector/wind block (insulation below unnecessary)

I'll spare you with the details of water bath canning, as you can look that up just about everywhere.  I will add one tip, however: When you put the jars into the water bath, put them all the way in!  If you put one half way in or less (if you place a jar in the rack as positioned above and the water touches the bottom of the jar), you could have a jar bust on you and loose the contents you've worked so hard to put into that jar... yep, it happened to me... the alternative that I later switched over to putting the first two jars into the rack when filling the jars and then put the rack into the boiling water - I recommend that method.

The Spoils of the day's work

 Also, in the picture above, you can see I am using Tattler reusable canning lids... I'm a huge fan!  Also shown is my storage method for the rings, bundled up with rubber bands pulled off of broccoli and other veggies.

In closing...

We now have over 50 quarts of corn syrup free thick apple sauce from apples that were not sprayed with toxic gick.  We were able to bless our neighbors with leftover apples and the kids got to spend time with the grandparents.  I did take a day off work, so the $ might not work out perfectly, but now I have memories and you got to read a blog post.

Feel free to contact me with any questions!  God bless and have a great week!

Food Mills vs Food Strainers

Food Tools

FOOD MILLS

The picture above shows a typical hand crank food mill.  These things are quite handy to have and can really cut down on the amount of labor/energy it takes to turn apples into apple sauce, tomatoes into tomato sauce, berries into jellies, etc.  I only have experience using them to make apple sauce...

To use this type of mill to make apple sauce, you first have to wash the apples, quarter them (I also cored them) and then cook them.  One that is done, you put them in this machine and they mash the fruit into the bowl it is sitting on and the skin/core stays in the mil and plugs up the holes... eventually you have to spin it backwards and throw out the skins and cores.

While this was a great improvement over the blender/food processor, there is yet a better option!

The Food Strainer and Sauce Maker

These come in a variety of different models...

Roma (~$50)

Victorio (~$50)

Norpro (~$63)

Squeezo (~$200 - not a typo!)

 Back to Basics (B2B) (~$100) (Shown above)

There is obviously a wide range of prices you can pay.  But since I have used a Back 2 Basics that I borrowed from a colleague, that is what I went with.  At this point I'll let you in on a secret...

The nice folks over at chefscatalog.com are currently selling this thing for $31.97 including tax and $0 shipping.  Get yours by clicking here.  (I don't do affiliate links if you are worried about that.)

Now why is that such an awesome deal?  Well aside from that fact that it typically costs $100, this thing really speeds things up!  No longer do I have to mess with emptying the core/skin from the food mill... or coring the apples.  Now, after I cook them, I drop the apples in to this thing and crank away!  (My kids aren't quite there yet, but my eldest tried his best this past year to help!)

The nice thing is that, as you can see above, the stuff I want drips down the white tray and into a bowl or stock pot, while the stuff I don't want gets pushed out the end through the clear plastic funnel into another bowl, perfect for the composting.  This is a continual process of feeding and cranking... only stopping when I need to empty a bowl or cook more apples!

OPTIONS!

Another nice thing about these food strainer (and sauce makers) is that they can be adapted to other uses.  There are berry screens that spit out the seeds (Diverticulitis anyone?), salsa screens for chunky tomatoes, and pumpkin screens for making pumpkin filling or processing winter squash!  Oh, and don't forget the grape spiral shown above... it's supposed to juice grapes with seeds... but rumor has it these machines don't work so well for that process... I'll let you know if I ever try it out!

Can you do that with a Foley food mill?  Maybe... but it's still more time and energy.

As always, feel free to share your thoughts!