Some weeks ago I went and picked up my cortland apples that had arrived from New York. I love the flavor of the Cortland apple and I think it makes the most delicious applesauce. After they sat in my garage for a few weeks they were good, ripe, and sweet.

I had gotten 5 bushel so it looked like a lot of apples to can. I started by bringing some in to wash in my kitchen sink. After they were washed, I cut them up and put them in my three biggest kettles. Don’t forget to put about 1/2 inch of water on the bottom of each kettle so you don’t burn them.

I put them on high for about 5 minutes and then stirred them and turned them back to medium until they were soft. While they were cooking I got my apple strainer set up. I like to do this outside so there are no sticky spots to clean up in my kitchen. Unfortunately, my girls were in school so I could not get them to turn it for me while I cut up more apples. Even preschoolers like to help with making applesauce and turning the strainer.

I kept cutting apples, stirring kettles, and cranking the strainer. By afternoon I had lots of applesauce to put in jars.

I added just 1/4 cup of sugar to each large container and stirred it in. The apples were quite sweet and could have easily been canned with no sugar.

I got my lids out and put them in hot water. If you have new lids this is not necessary. I then hauled up 50 some quart jars from the basement. (Again I wished that my helpers weren’t in school!) It worked great to put them in a reusable grocery bag to carry them up. I washed the jars in hot water and started to fill them with applesauce. After I filled 14 jars I took a dishcloth and wiped each rim. After placing a lid on them I screwed on the jar rings.

I got my canners out and put 7 quart in each. After they were on the stove, I added water up to the jars neck. I put them on high and left them to boil for 8 minutes.

While they were heating I finished putting the lids on the rest of the jars. And then came the job of washing all the dishes. All those containers and kettles need to be washed. I had filled my kettles with water and all the containers I had rinsed out as I was done with them. So the washing went quite quickly and my helpers were then home to help with the dish drying. With the dishes done I needed to prop up my tired feet!

After they were all canned and lined up on the counter, I counted my jars. I had had 56 but 2 of the jar’s bottoms broke in the canner. So then out of 54 only 3 did not seal. I thought that was not too bad with having used all preused lids.

How do you can your applesauce? In the oven?