How to Make Applesauce with KitchenAid® Attachments
Today’s post is sponsored by KitchenAid as they provided me with a stand mixer and several attachments, so I can teach you a very simple way how to make applesauce.
Delicious, smooth, warm applesauce.
This time of year of canning and preserving always feels right. It’s like birthing a baby, in a way, with the fruits of our labor coming to fruition in the growing season canning, preserving, and eating from the land. Even though we have a city lot with 14 raised beds, we also head up the street to several accessible farms, to our local Harry & David, and to the Farmer’s Market to buy organic goods.
Every year our dear friends, who live a few miles from us, provide us with apples.
And every year we make applesauce. Often it involves the family, or one of my kids helping me. It’s really a quick process!
It’s one of the easiest ways to harvest and enjoy apples in the winter months ahead. And what I love is that everyone can get in on the canning process, and YES, you really do NOT have to peel or core the apples!
Did you hear this, folks? Cook them down with skins, cores, stems, and all.
Attach the Fruit Strainer/Food Grinder attachments to your KitchenAid stand mixer. (The links to what you will need are at the bottom of this post.)
Make sure there is one LARGE bowl ready to receive the pressed applesauce, and one smaller bowl ready to receive the residue from the apples.
How to Make Applesauce:
Wash the apples. I usually put them into my deep kitchen sink, add cold water, and let them soak.
Cut the apples. Taking the cut apples from the sink, slice into quarters. LEAVE SKINS AND STEMS ON. Place in a big pot.
Cook the apples. Fill the pot as high as you can. Add about 1/2 cup of water. Cook the apples down, which means you cook them until they are soft and tender.
Press the apples. Ladle the apples into the top of the fruit strainer on the KitchenAid stand mixer. Push the apples through.
How it works. The Fruit Vegetable Strainer/Food Grinder does 2 things. It separates out the stems, seeds, and skins of the apple into one bowl, and the applesauce into the other bowl.
Fill the jars. Fill the sterilized canning jars with applesauce and process in a hot water canner for 25 minutes.
Enjoy it hot. There’s nothing better than a warm bowl of applesauce with fresh whipped cream.
The applesauce process is amazingly quick and efficient, and one of the things I love to can each year.
There are different ways to add flavor to the applesauce, too, if you like to can. (Very top photo: Home canned applesauce and cherries.)
You can add sugar (but I don’t), cinnamon, even melted red hot candies! These add a cinnamon flavor, and also quite a bit of sugar to each jar, but in the long run, the “pink” applesauce is what kids love the most!
You can eat it fresh, or if you have an abundance like I usually do, follow the canning process (go to Ball.com for any canning questions.)
Thank you KitchenAid for sponsoring this post today. If you have any questions about the process of making applesauce, leave me a question and I’ll try to answer it for you.
Our family has been enjoying this scrumptious treat for years and am thrilled to share the process with you today!
Oh, and an empty pot is a good sign of happy tummies in the household!
Do you have any secrets for making home-canned applesauce?
Here are the attachments you will need:
KitchenAid® Fruit/Vegetable Strainer Set
KitchenAid® Food Grinder
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I’m Sandy—lover of food, family, cooking, THE BIG BOARD, travel, and bringing people together. Through great recipes and connection around the table, we become better, stronger, and more courageous people. Feasting on Life is real, and every time we do it, we grow a little more. Read more...
Any guesses on if this would work with pears? We make pear sauce each year and this would be great!
Actually I have made it with pears and it was delish. It’s a bit runnier though.
Have used the strainer attachment since it first came out. It’s a game changer!! Works fantastic for doing tomatoes for sauce too. Couldnt can without it!!
I see someone replied above about being unable to do 60pints of applesauce…I am curious about the volume this could do as well. Until proven otherwise I’m optimistic.
We used to have the KA original applesauce maker which is more like a manual Foley but attached to the top of your KitchenAid metal bowl with a wooden KitchenAid mill press that attaches to the spinning head. But they don’t make those anymore or my Opa has made it specifically. We used to turn out hundreds of large bags of freezer applesauce. Bushels. I’m curious if this small applesauce maker could make as much as you have to manually stuff the cooked fruit into the chamber.
Does the fruit get drawn in on its own as long as it is soft enough or does it constantly need to be manually pushed through the grinder. And how much applesauce could you make in a day do you estimate? I’m looking to freeze or can upwards of 100Litres.
Yes the fruit gets drawn in as you push it down. We love the KA attachment.
I have made applesauce this same way with KitchenAid attachments. I’m wondering today if mashed potatoes could also be made this way — without peeling first. I am planning to prepare an overabundance of potatoes for the freezer but would love not to peel them first.
what do you think?
Hi Lydia. I have not tried the mashed potatoes!
Thanks for sharing this! All the best!
My dad always made applesauce from the apple tree in our yard. I’m going to try it now with our assorted apples from apple picking yesterday. I’m going to boil the apples in apple cider (1 cup) a little lemon juice and a few cinnamon sticks. Then his secret ingredient was a teaspoon of vanilla! I hope it works! I bought the food grinder for my moms chopped liver, and the fruit attachment for my dad applesauce. i don’t think i made either in the 30 yrs i’ve had it. hope this works!!! TYSM
Can this be frozen instead of canned? Maybe if I add a little lemon juice, it won’t turn too brown?
I haven’t tried that, but if you do, come back and tell me (if it works!)
I have a KA food grinder but not a v/f strainer. Can I use the food grinder without the strainer for applesauce? If so, how?
I’ve only made this recipe using both the products. They work together, which makes it easy to cut and cook the apples WHOLE without removing the core and seeds and skin! SO EASY! So yes, you need both products.
I just finished processing 90 lbs of apples for apple butter, applesauce, and apple pie filling. My foley mill tortured my shoulder (I am old). I would love to find something for my Kitchenaid to help out. But looking at this, it would be entirely inadequate for the volume I deal with. I have the grinder attachment, but to put thru cooked apples for 60 pints of applesauce would take much longer than it takes me for my manual foley mill. Give me a grinder/processor with larger capacity and I would be very happy. That said, the slicer/spiralizer let me power thru all those apples in a heartbeat….
love the recipe :) already had the attachment, used it for tomatoes did 30 pounds of apple in record time.
thanks so much.
People can’t believe how easy it is to make apple sauce with the attachemwnt but I’ve been doing it now for years. Tomorrow I am helping a local community group who makes hundreds of pies as a fundraiser at thanksgiving. They’ve started making apple sauce with the cores and peels so I’m going with my mixer to show how much easier it can be. I love that they use what would go on the compost to make another delicious product that will be almost entirely profit (just the cost of jars).
Great story, Sam. Thanks for sharing! It’s so much easier … if people only knew! LOL