Apple sauce

Dutchies love their apple sauce, or, as they call it, appelmoes. I love it too, though I am more familiar with a chunkier version of it, which we normally use as half-jam and a sweet fix (white bread + apple puree = instant cake, or something along those lines). It goes surprisingly well with savory dishes as well; with fish (especially a fattier kind, like salmon), slow cooked beef and lots of other things. It is also one of the simplest things to make and keep for the winter if you have your own apples.

Apple sauce is cooked&mashed apples, with sugar. How much sugar depends on a particular apple cultivar, how you close a jar, etc. If you close your jars hot, in theory you can do it without sugar at all, especially if the apples themselves are a bit on a sweet side, however I would say add at least 100g of sugar per 1 kg of apples, just in case. Sugar acts as a preservative, and the last thing you want is your entire winter stock going kaboom if your apples were tad too sour. Kaboom is not a joke by the way, a pressure building up in a fermenting jar can literally launch it from its shelf.

Need:
1 kg of peeled apples
300 g of sugar

There is no sure way to measure sugar vs non cooked apples, as the amount of water, structure, etc. differs. If you have very sour apples you might want to use more, if you have very dry sweet ones, there can be less. Experiment is your friend there, but 300g/1kg seems to be pretty reliable.

The rest is fairly simple. Peel apples, cut them in quarters, take seed pods out. If apples are on a monster side, cut them a bit smaller. Peel 1kg, add it to the pot in which you are going to cook it, add 300g of sugar, so it coats them, then peel the next 1 kg, add sugar, repeat till the pot is almost full (about by 10 inches from top, otherwise it will splatter annoyingly all over the place when cooking). Cover it, leave it over the night.

The next day you will notice, there is some liquid in the pot. Great! Stir the whole thing through, so you do not have too much sugar stuck to the sides of the pot and put it on fire. Cook for about 10-15 min after it starts boiling - generally to the point that apples start to fall apart, which also depends on variety. I love the local one, Groningen Kroon, the most, as it turns into a perfect sauce pretty much instantly and without much of extra effort required, but there are plenty of other good varieties too.

Either way, when cooking is done, you have to either blend it for a smooth sauce, or mash manually. If you cut apples smaller, you can skip the whole mashing part entirely, and just have it a bit chunkier. Whichever is preferred really, but keep in mind that the whole thing is very hot, so you need to wait before blending it, not to screw your blender. After you blend it, you have to boil it again before adding to the jars for the winter keeping.

Jars:
There are different methods how to close jars for the winter and how to sterilize them. What I do is using glass jars and metal lids which you screw on a jar. It is possible to use the same lid a few times, but eventually it start loosing the tightness, so all in all it is more reliable to always use new lids.

I wash the jars very well with a dish washing soap, then rinse them with boiled water. You can also rinse it with vodka, but I rather keep it to water, does not seem to be much difference there. After washing, place them upside down on a clean towel, so the water can dribble out.

Put lids in a boiling water for 5 minutes.

Take one jar, pour boiling apple sauce into it (with soup spoon), fish out a lid from a boiling water,put it on a jar and close it tight with the kitchen gloves on your hands. Actually that's a hubby job, men can screw it tighter if they put some force to it.

Place all closed jars on a towel, and cover it with a blanket, so they cool off very gradually. Move to a storage after 2 days.