My secret for all natural, no sugar added applesauce is to use 2/3 sweet apples and 1/3 tart apples. The tart ones keep it from becoming sickeningly sweet like store bought and help keep it's consistency. Sweet apples tend to get softer quicker, the carbs changing to fructose causes the cell walls to begin to break down. The tart apples remain more crisp longer as their sugar content is lower.
Tart apples make the best pie or apple crisp filling. They retain their shape better when cooked under high heat and temperature during processing into cans.
By mixing various apple varieties, you can get a better apple flavor than with just one. I tend to use two different varieties of sweeter apples in my mix.
So here is the basic recipe for one canner load (seven quarts):
18 pounds of apples (6 pounds tart and 12 pounds divided between sweet apple varieties)
2 cups of water
7 tablespoons of lemon juice
Wash apples and rough chop them into chunks with peel still attached. I basically am chopping them to get the seed section out. I do worry about concentrating prussic acid when making apple sauce, the rest stays. As I chop, I drop them into a very large stainless pot with the water to keep the initial apples from scorching. Periodically use a potato masher to smash the apples as they soften and stir occasionally with a very long wooden spoon. As the apples soften and the pot fills, you will need to stir more often.
After about 30 - 60 minutes, depending on how small you chopped your apples, the mix will be ready to run through a food mill. I LOVE my Kitchen Aid mixer! Karl bought the food grinder attachment for me several years ago and it is fabulous. It grinds the apples and drops the pulp into a clean pan and sends the peels and hard core pieces out the other side. It makes it so much easier than hand grinding! It also mean I can leave the peels on while softening which releases more pectin into the product.
Return the now clean pulp to the stove and add lemon juice. This will keep the acidity up and color will be retained. If you used a lot of red apples, the color will be rosy. If you used more green apples, it will be more yellow with a green tint. I try to use both for the best color but it depends on what is ready at the time of picking.
Bring the mix to a boil, fill, and seal hot sterile quart jars. Process jars in a water bath for 20 minutes. Remove the canner lid and turn off heat for 5 minutes than lift jars out to a thick towel on the counter to completely cool.
Voila! It takes me about 2 1/2 - 3 hours from wash to counter for one load, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter depending if duty interrupts.
