No Sugar Added Homemade Applesauce

I detailed my love for homemade applesauce in my Applesauce with a Rosy Glow post. As my tastes have changed since that post many years ago, I've come to prefer a no sugar added homemade applesauce which I make every fall with locally picked apples. It's this applesauce I now use in my vegan whoopie pie, applesauce nut bread and no sugar added apple crisp recipes. 

This is my Applesauce with a Rosy Glow without the sugar and cinnamon,--a recipe I originally in the Boston Herald sometime in the 1990s. 

No Sugar Added Rosy Applesauce (yield: approximately 6 – 9 pints)  

5-6 pounds red-skinned applesauce (this is a ½ peck of apples) 

½ cup water 

To make “mash” on stovetop: 

1. Wash, quarter and core the apples. 
2. Place them in large saucepan with the water. 
3. Cook over very low heat until the pulp softens and separates from the peel – from 30 minutes to an hour. Stir occasionally to avoid scorching. 

To make “mash” in the oven: 

1. Place oven rack on lowest setting. 
2. Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees farenheit. 
3. Wash, quarter and core the apples placing them in a turkey roasting pan designed to hold 12 – 15 pound turkey. 
4. Add water to apples in pan. 
5. Tent/loosely cover top of roasting pan with aluminum foil, making certain reflective side of foil faces apples. 
6. Carefully place tented roasting pan with apples and water in oven on rack on lowest setting. 
7. Bake until pulp softens and separates from the peel without effort – from 30 minutes to just over an hour. 

Once “mash” is made: 

1. Press “mash” through a food mill or colander. 
2. Serve either warm or chilled. Refrigerate any unused portion for up to 5 days, freeze for up to 3 months or can the applesauce using the boiling-water method in steps 4 and 5. 
3. Heat the applesauce until it boils. Ladle into clean, hot canning jars, leaving ½ inch of headspace at the top of each. 
4. Close the jars and process in a water-bath canner with a rack for 20 minutes.

Canned unsweetened applesauce 

in the process of being

Labelled