You can do a boiling water bath canner for applesauce and apple pie filling.
Here is a link to canning them.
You order Clear Jel online most of the time. I get mine from www.barryfarm.com.
Amish stores have it, and a few cake decorating shops, too.

Here is a link that might be useful: Canning apples.

Also keep in mind that if these are windfall apples, extra lemon juice is required to make them safe. The pH of windfalls is much less acidic than is that of tree ripened.

Dave

Thanks, Linda and Dave! As a matter of fact, Linda, I have your apple pie jam recipe pulled out to make as well. I have a feeling it will make great gifts for the holidays.

Dave, these are not windfall apples, but picked from a tree in a local orchard by my family (well, except for the few that we accidentally knocked to the ground and then picked up :) ). I did not know about the lemon juice thing for the freefall ones though. Why the extra lemon? Is it because they are considered "over ripe"?

Why the extra lemon? Is it because they are considered "over ripe"?

Yes and exposed to injury/bacteria. Overripe fruit has a higher pH so is treated as low-acid. As you know, pH of the end product is what makes it safe or not so added acid is required to make it safe.

Dave

Windfall apples are under-ripe and can be contaminated with microorganisms. So a bit of disinfecting lemon juice is probably a good thing :-)

Windfall apples are under-ripe

Maybe yours are malna. ;)

Dave

That's what I've always called apples blown off the tree before they were ripe. Over-ripe ones that are soft and yucky we called deadfall.

Perhaps "windfall" is another one of those terms that has conflicting definitions and shouldn't be used.

I've always considered the fruit on the ground to be dead-ripe (barring a storm). When the fruit is ripe, it loosens from the tree. If it's too green, you have a terrible time pulling it off.

In my experience and for canning purposes based on previous discussions here, "windfall" fruit is used to mean ground laying fruit as opposed to on the tree fruit regardless of how it got there. The majority of it will be considered, or at least should be treated as, over-ripe.

Dave

What kind of apples are used to cook SMOOTH applesauce? Some apples are difficult and timely to break down and others easily cook to a smooth texture. My family dislikes chunky applesauce. A local grower here in Indiana suggested a Gayla or Jonathan apple. What other apples would be good for this??

Macintosh apples cook up smooth and creamy. The Macs grown in Virginia seem to become mushy within days after picking if stored at room temperature. When I lived in NY I remember Macs staying crisp for weeks. This year I saved all the Macs from my farm share in the fridge and made sauce while they were still crisp. It still took a while for them to cook down because the ones on top didn't sink into the liquidy part for a while.

For smooth sauce I just quarter the apples and cook them down, then put them through my Villaware food strainer to get the peel and seeds out. It's much easier to can than the chunky version which always seems to boil out on me.

Melissa

Smooth can also be most any kind of apple if its cooked long enough and run through a fine sieve. If you wanted even smoother, like for baby food, it can be pureed in a blender. Most store commercual bought (Motts) have very small bits, as its apples are mashed and milled first before they get cooked. Using just one apple type may offer a plan taste. Using different types, like Granny Smith, Delicious, Fuji, Macoun, Cortand, can give a much better, more complex taste.

Yes, the Villaware/ROma food strainer with either the regular screen or the finer holed berry screen is a great tool to get the apples down to a sauce very fast.