Apple Season: How We Make Apple Jelly Apple Sauce and Apple Butter

Hello Friends. Apple Season is upon us, and we love to make so many different things with all the different varieties of apples. Sometimes we will mix several different ones together in the same batch and come up with something delicious. We love to mix sweet and sour together. 

Come with us today as we make low to no-sugar apple jelly, apple sauce, and apple butter. 

We are using a steam juicer today to make this process so much easier. We bought my mother one for Christmas one year and she loves it.  It takes so many steps out for her. If you want to collect your juice another way, you can skip this part because I am going to show you how to set it up. But wait, if you have never used one of these, I would highly recommend it. If you are interested in getting one, I have this one in my  Amazon Store on my Canning and Preserving Essentials list. The link to my Amazon store will be linked below.

Place the water pot onto your stove and fill it with water up to the fill line.

Then place the middle pot, which has a funnel-shaped colander in it, on top of the water pot. It is also the pot that has the hose connection sticking out of the bottom of the pot.  Make sure the post of the hose connection sits right down into the half-moon cut-out space. 

Just like this, and attach the hose. 

At this point, clamp the hose shut using the clamp that is attached to the hose, and then hook it to the handle of the pot. This way, no juice will start leaking out while the steamer is extracting the juice. 

Second, be sure to prepare your jars and heat them up to keep warm, as you will be placing hot liquid into these jars. I like to warm mine up in my oven on a low temperature.

Next, we are getting all of our apples washed, sliced, and cored. We do not peel our apples because all the vitamins are in the peels, and we don't want to waste those nutrients. If you do not want the peels, by all means, you can peel yours. We use a nifty kitchen gadget to make this process so much faster. 

This little gadget slices and cores at the same time. 

We check for seeds, and then we toss them into the strainer  basket of the steam juicer. 

Once it is all full, we place the strainer basket on top of the middle pot of the steam juicer. 

Place the lid on the strainer basket and turn your burner on to start heating up. 

As the water heats up, it steams the juice out of the apples and sweats them down. The juice is being collected in the middle pot. This will be around a 30 to 45-minute process 

In the meantime, save those cores, and if you have peeled your apples, save those too. We are going to put them to use. Put those into a big pot and add enough water to cover the contents. Bring them to a boil and let them boil just long enough to draw out some more juice. Or you can just set the to simmer for a while. Which ever fits your timetable better. 

 

After they have simmered or boiled down a little, strain the liquid out into a bowl and reserve it for later. This will be extra juice to add with the other that will be used in making the jelly.

After about 30 minutes, take the lid off the steam juicer and use a potato masher to mash down all the apples. This extracts more juice and also lets you see how much more they need to sweat down. 

Replace the lid and let this for for a bit more. Keep an eye on it. Now, we need to get this set up to catch the juice by using gravity. This is our setup. This steamer works well using gravity to pull the juice down to the hose. We like to take a dishpan (since we are already going to be using it to boil the juice) and place it in a chair or you can use a table, etc. If you are just collecting the juice for drinking, like grape juice, you can collect the juice in a pitcher or individual jars for canning. Make sure at this point the hose is still clamped tight. 

Once you start seeing juice collect in the hose, you can release the clamp and hook it onto the hose post and let it freely drain into the pan.

Look at all this liquid gold.

Repeat the process of mashing and draining, mashing and draining, until you think all the juice is extracted from the apples. Remove the top pot, which is the strainer basket, and set it aside. You can turn off your burner or stove eye now. Tilt the middle pot that has the hose attached, and drain out the rest of the juice to empty the pot. 

 We like to clear off the stove at this point to make room on my big burner to place the dishpan of juice onto to get ready to make the jelly. We are multitasking since there are two of us, but I will try to keep the instructions separate. 

Jelly:

Place the dishpan or pot of juice back onto your stove. Turn your burner on. Since we are making low to no-sugar jelly, we use Pomona's Pectin, and there are a few little steps. 

The box comes with the pectin that is designed to work with sugar substitutes. And there is a little package of calcium to turn into water that acts as an activator to gel the juice. We are strictly using the directions that come inside the box as well, so this is not my recipe. If you are not using this particular pectin, follow the directions that come with the pectin you are using. We also use this book sometimes for other great recipes and apple jelly. It is packed with so many recipes for all kinds of different fruits to make jellies, jams, preserves, honeys, and butters. 

Both the pectin and the book are in my Amazon Store on my Canning and Preserving Essentials List. Link to my store is below.

We first have to make the calcium water, and you will have a bunch left over because this little packet and box of pectin is able to make 3 or 4 batches of jelly. So when you use what you need for one recipe, you store the rest of the water in the refrigerator for the next batch. 

You are to add the calcium water, along with some lemon juice, to the juice. Then bring to a boil to activate the gel action. 

While that is coming to a boil, mix your sugar and pectin together as per instructions in the package directions or book. 

When the juice has come to a boil, add the pectin and sugar mixture, mixing very thoroughly to avoid any clumping and to make sure all ingredients are combined well. We do this with a whisk because we use Stevia, and it is a fine powder. Bring this to a boil again and boil for two minutes, making sure to keep stirring to keep from sticking. 

After two minutes, remove from heat, ladle into warm jars, wipe rims of the jars, place lid and band on, and tighten finger-tight.

Place jars into a water bath canner, cover jars with water in the canner until jars are completely covered and under water (about an inch or two above the lids), and process in a rolling boil for 10 minutes. 

After 10 minutes, remove from the canner with jar lifters and set aside to cool and seal. 

You should start hearing those wonderful "pings". Leave these sitting overnight to cool. The next morning, check the seals and if they are all sealed, place them in your pantry. If you have a jar that didn't seal, put it in the refrigerator and let it be the first jar you use up. If, for some reason, the jelly did not "set", all is not lost. You can still use this "syrup" to pour onto pancakes, waffles, yogurt, or ice cream. You can use it as a liquid base in baked goods like pancake and waffle batter, muffins, breads, etc. Don't let it go to waste. 

Applesauce:

 

Take your steamer pot from the steam juicer and pour all the contents into a crock pot. All the juice should be out of it by now. 

If you have an immersion blender, blend and puree all the apple slices, ensuring the peels are pureed thoroughly. 

At this point, I am going to use half to make the apple sauce first and reserve the other half to make the apple butter. If you want to season your apple sauce, you most certainly can. I choose not to because I can season it when it is eaten or if I am using it in a recipe. 

For the apple sauce, I will ladle the puree into my jars up to the rim, leaving a one-inch head space. Then, I use my debubbler tool to make sure there are no air bubbles in the jar. You can also give the jar a little shake or tap the jar on the counter to make the bubbles come to the top. If you have any air bubbles in any kind of puree, this could capture bacteria that can cause mold spores. So removing the air bubbles is very important. After removing the air bubbles, I wipe the rim, place the lids and bands on finger tip tight. Place jars into a water bath canner and fill with water until the jars are completely covered with water. Place the lid on the canner and process for 10 minutes after the water comes to a rolling boil. Remove from the canner and set on a counter to cool. 

Apple Butter:

The remaining puree in the crock pot will now get turned into delicious apple butter. To the puree, I will add brown sugar and cinnamon and stir it in until well combined. You can add any other spices that you would like for yours. Put the lid on your crock pot, and let it slow cook overnight on low to create the caramelization. The next morning, ladle into your jars up to the neck, leaving a one-inch headspace. Debubble the puree to remove all air bubbles. Wipe the rim of the jar, place lids and bands on finger tip tight. Process in a water bath canner for 10 minutes after the water comes to a rolling boil. Remove from the water bath canner with a jar lifter and set onto a counter to cool. 

You have now made three things with all those apples, and nothing went to waste. 

If you would like to see video versions of making apple jelly, apple sauce, and apple butter, click on the videos below:

If you would like to know more about a Steam Juicer and how to set one up and use it, you can watch this video:

I hope this tutorial has been very helpful and educational. Most of all, I hope these are three more things that you can add to your list of things to do with apples. 

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Tracy 

Keeper of the Home