75 pounds of less-than-perfect apples, four crockpots, two days, and one very overworked food mill later… I ended up with 50 pints of homemade applesauce and three apple pies tucked away in the freezer. Here’s exactly how I turned a local orchard’s “duds” into a pantry full of food with almost no waste.
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When a local private orchard offered their “dud” apples for a ridiculously reasonable price, naturally I decided the appropriate response was to bring home 75 pounds of them.
Because apparently I have no concept of moderation when produce is cheap.
The apples weren’t picture-perfect. They had blemishes, funny shapes, and all the little imperfections that keep perfectly good fruit from making it onto a grocery store display. But for applesauce? They were perfect.
My original plan was simple: make enough applesauce to stock our family for the year.
Two days, four crockpots, a food mill, and a whole lot of apples later, I ended up with:
- 50 pints of home-canned, unsweetened applesauce
- 3 batches of apple pie filling in the freezer
- Very little waste
- And absolutely no desire to look at another apple for at least a few days
Why I Used “Dud” Apples
If you’re preserving food, it is absolutely worth checking around for local orchards and farms that sell seconds, duds, or imperfect produce.
These apples weren’t rotten or unusable, they just weren’t all grocery-store pretty. When you’re about to cook them down and send them through a food mill anyway, who cares what they look like?
Buying imperfect produce also meant I could put up a huge amount of food without spending a fortune.
And 75 pounds of apples goes a surprisingly long way.
Making 50 Pints of Applesauce
I wanted the applesauce as simple as possible: just apples.
No added sugar. No cinnamon. No elaborate recipe.
Leaving it plain means we can eat it as-is, add cinnamon or sweetener when we open a jar, use it for baking, serve it to the baby, or use it however else we need.
The Four-Crockpot Operation
This was not a delicate little afternoon canning project.
I had four crockpots running at once.
I washed the apples, cut away any bad spots, chopped them up, and loaded the crockpots. Because I was using a food mill, I didn’t have to spend hours peeling every apple first.
That alone made processing 75 pounds much more manageable.
I let the apples cook until they were completely soft and ready to fall apart. Then I ran the cooked apples through my food mill.
The food mill separated out the skins, seeds, cores, and other bits I didn’t want while pushing all that beautiful cooked apple through.
It gave me smooth applesauce with very little actual apple going to waste.
And then I did it again.
And again.
And again.
This entire operation took me about two days of rotating crockpots, milling apples, filling jars, and canning.
Was my kitchen an apple-processing facility for 48 hours? Yes.
Would I do it again? Also yes.
After two days of processing, I had 50 beautiful pints of plain applesauce lined up.
There is something deeply satisfying about looking at 50 jars of food and knowing they started as a pile of funny-looking discounted apples.
Freezer Apple Pie Filling
Once I realized I was going to have enough applesauce to last us approximately forever, I decided to pull some of the apples aside for something a little more exciting:
apple pie.
Instead of canning the pie filling, I made simple batches for the freezer.
Each batch uses 7 cups of sliced apples, which gives me a ready-to-go amount for a future pie.
Was Processing 75 Pounds of Apples Worth It?
Absolutely.
It was also a lot of apples.
But that’s kind of the point.
Homesteading doesn’t always have to mean growing every single ingredient yourself. Sometimes it means finding a local orchard selling apples nobody else wants, bringing home 75 pounds of them, and figuring out how to make sure they don’t go to waste.
For two days, my kitchen was covered in apples. I had four crockpots bubbling away, the food mill working overtime, jars everywhere, and what felt like an endless supply of apple chunks waiting for their turn.
But at the end of it, I had 50 pints of applesauce and three future apple pies tucked away for my family.
And because I used the food mill instead of peeling everything beforehand, there was surprisingly little waste for the amount of fruit I processed.
That’s my favorite kind of preserving project: cheap produce, simple ingredients, minimal waste, and a pantry that’s a whole lot fuller than it was two days ago.
It doesn’t have to be fancy.
It just has to work.
And sometimes it takes four crockpots.
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