Description
This applesauce requires less than an hour and 1 pan to prepare. This recipe is not only easy, but also sugar-free. Only apples, lemon, and cinnamon.
Ingredients
Scale
- about 5 to 7 apples, depending on the size, peeled, cored, and quartered
- 1 strips of lemon peel (use a vegetable peeler to strip, zest only, not the pith)
- 1/4 cup of water
- 3 teaspoons of lemon juice (more or less to taste)
- cinnamon to taste
- optional: a tablespoon of maple syrup (if the apple sauce turns out too sweet add more lemon juice)
Instructions
- Soak the apples in vinegar and water for a couple of hours. This is a good method to remove any coating/chemicals. Once they have soaked, rinse very well, or the applesauce will taste a bit like apple vinegar.
- Slice the apples into pieces, and remove the cores and any leaves. You can either remove the skin (soaking in vinegar is not needed then) or leave the skin on because you will blend the applesauce later, and no pieces of skin are even noticeable, but feel free to peel if you prefer.
- Put all the apples in a large pot on the stove with a bit of water (less than half a cup), lemon juice, lemon peel, and cinnamon to taste. I usually add a few tablespoons of cinnamon to a pot.
- Cook the apples on medium heat until completely soft. The time can vary.
- When the apples are soft, and the skin starts to fall off, turn off the heat and let the apples cool off. Remove the lemon peels and use either a blender or hand blender to puree the apples until totally smooth. Optionally, you could add the maple syrup now, but the applesauce could already be sweet enough. Add a teaspoon of maple syrup if needed.
- Pour the applesauce into jars.
Notes
This applesauce can also be frozen or kept in the fridge for up to a month.