The other day on my personal Facebook, I posted that I had made applesauce but wasn’t sure if I would post a recipe because it’s so easy, basically just 2 ingredients. I do have a few tricks for making it though, so I decided just to go with it.

Like a kajillion other recipes, this is crockpot applesauce – I think by far the crockpot is the way to go, because there is no stirring necessary. So you don’t have to spend your day babysitting the applesauce, you just turn it on and go.

However, unlike a lot of recipes I have seen, this applesauce is just dirt simple. It has no added sugar, no lemon, no butter. All of which I have seen added to recipes for no good reason, because if you are starting from good apples, none of that other stuff is necessary. Nothing but apples and cinnamon are necessary, and the cinnamon is optional.

In the picture below, is everything you need to make applesauce – apples, cinnamon, an apple slicer or a knife, a crockpot and a food mill. Four year olds are good helpers, but are optional. The crockpot does the cooking, the food mill gets rid of the peels (I don’t pre-peel), and the slicer is just because I’m lazy and don’t like to slice apples with a knife (although I end up doing it anyway since some apples are too big for the slicer).

Applesauce!

4-5 lbs. apples (tart ones with strong apple flavor are best)
1 teaspoon cinnamon (optional, but highly recommended)

(This is for a 3 quart pot – if you have a bigger pot, scale up).

Wash and cut up the apples, remove cores and seeds, and put the apple slices in the crockpot. Peels can stay on if you have a food mill. I use Honeycrisp apples and they are the bomb, but kind of expensive. You can use any kind of tart apples. Granny Smiths are also good and usually cheaper and easier to find.

See? Peels on. Trust me, it will be okay.

Sprinkle one teaspoon of ground cinnamon on top of the apples. Cover the crockpot and turn to high for at least 4 hours or until apples are soft. You could also put them on low for 6-7 hours.

When the apples are done cooking, they look like the picture below. They will be completely soft, and the color from the peels will have leached out into into the juice. This, along with the cinnamon, gives kind of a rosy tint to the applesauce. Possibly green peels would be more green. Something to keep in mind.

Now it is time to use the food mill. Place your food mill over a bowl. Mine has different size screens so I use the largest one because I like my applesauce a little bit chunky. If you like yours smoother, use a finer screen.

Use a ladle to give the cooked apples a little stir, and then begin ladling the apples into the mill. Begin milling – the mill catches the peels and turns the apple flesh into sauce. Every so often, remove the peels from the screen, then continue milling until all apples are processed.

The end result:

Applesauce is good cold, but it is really a treat when still warm and served with ice cream. It’s like apple pie without the pie crust – delicious!