Apple Glut? Delicious Ways to Preserve Your Bumper Harvest
Apple Glut? 3 Delicious Ways to Preserve Your Bumper Harvest (Plus a Secret Tip for Better Flavour!)
The autumn air signals more than just changing leaves; it brings the annual apple glut! If my own trees are any indication, it’s been a great year for the harvest. But the sudden bonanza of ripe fruit—especially after a weekend of gales—brings a classic problem for the proud apple tree owner: how do you deal with a mountain of fruit before rot sets in?
Forget eating ten a day; we need solutions for long-term apple preservation. Thankfully, the answers are easy, delicious, and will fill your home with the warm, autumnal scent of apples.
1. Dehydrated Apple Rings and the Magic of Apple Leather
The domestic food dehydrator ($\pounds 35$ from Amazon or similar) is your best friend right now. While it makes a gentle humming noise, it uses a tiny amount of power and delivers jars full of delicious, leathery snacks and cooking ingredients.
Classic Dried Apple Rings
Prep: Simply core and peel your apples, then slice them thinly.
Flavour Bath: Dunk the slices into a mix of lemon juice and a little sugar.
Dehydrate: Place them on the dehydrator rack to dry for eight to nine hours.
These versatile rings are perfect for future puddings, stews, homemade apple sauces, or even eating straight from the jar.
Try: Homemade Apple Leather
This year, I’ve been experimenting with apple leather, which is basically a slow-dried apple puree.
Blend: Mix your fruit, sugar, and lemon juice until completely smooth.
Spread: Line the food dehydrator tray with parchment paper. Spread the puree mixture evenly and thinly across the tray.
Flavour Tip: Add a touch of cinnamon for a warm, spicy flavour.
Dry: Set the device to 60°C.
Apple ‘leather’
The resulting “leather” is a fantastic, healthy snack for a long winter’s walk. It keeps for months in a sealed container in the fridge and is a brilliant, dense base for crumbles or a flavour-booster for fruity curries.
2. Freeze Your Apple Puree for Winter Cooking
If you don't have a dehydrator, or simply want a quicker solution, the freezer is a superb option.
Concentrated Apple Cubes
Make a homemade apple puree, but cook it down as far as you can until it is denser and thicker than the typical apple sauce you’d serve with pork.
Fill ice-cube trays with the concentrated puree.
Freeze until solid.
You can then pop out a couple of these handy cubes to instantly thicken and slightly sweeten a nice winter pork stew or curry. It's an easy way to add a complex fruit note to savoury dishes.
Fermented apples
3. Pickled Apples - The Fermented Food Craze
For something entirely different and a nod to the healthy trend of fermented foods, why not try making pickled apples? This results in a spicy, complex, and addictive preserve.
Quick Indian-Style Apple Pickle
Slice washed apples into thick batons (about 1/2-inch thick by 1 1/2 inches long) and mix in a bowl with salt, cayenne, and turmeric.
In a small pan, warm a tablespoon of flavourless oil. Add a couple of teaspoonfuls of mustard seeds and cook until they begin to pop.
Add chopped garlic and ginger and fry briefly.
Stir in dry spices: ground turmeric, ground fenugreek, red chilly powder, and asafoetida.
Pour in one cup of white wine vinegar, half that amount of water, some sugar, and salt, and bring to the boil.
After a couple of minutes, take off the heat, allow to cool for about five minutes, then pour the entire mix over your apple batons.
Once completely cool, place the pickled apples into sterilised jars for long-term storage.
Fermented apples are delicious
Why Preserve? The Secret to Better Apple Flavour
Some might ask: why go to all this effort when we can buy "fresh" apples 365 days a year?
My reply: All of these preserving methods result in truly delicious morsels that supermarket apples simply can’t match. And how fresh are apples that have travelled thousands of miles across the globe?
If you don’t have an apple glut from your own garden this autumn, I strongly urge you to seek out and buy excellent apples sold by local growers. They are no more expensive than their imported supermarket cousins and the difference in taste is astonishing.
The Grower’s Secret: Ripeness is Everything
Years ago I spoke to Duncan Small from Charlton Orchards near Taunton, who explains their philosophy: no eating apple is picked before it is ripe.
"To maximise the flavour of the fruit, it needs to be on the tree until the starches are converted to fruit sugars," Duncan says. "If you pick too early, the proportion of starch to sugar is much higher – the apple will keep better, but you won’t get the flavour."
This is why buying local and in season is the key to that intensely satisfying, deep apple flavour.
The Best Apple Varieties to Seek Out This Autumn
Choosing the right variety can transform your kitchen. Duncan shared some of their favourites for the best eating and cooking experiences:
Cox’s Orange Pippin: The perennial, most popular English apple.
Ashmead’s Kernel: An excellent late apple sold in December for Christmas. It's an old-fashioned russet with an exceptionally well-developed flavour—sweet, slightly acidic, and slightly spicy.
Suntan: A cross between Cox’s and an ancient variety. It is like a very intensively flavoured Cox, slightly more acidic, and bakes beautifully.
Red Pippin: A great modern variety, very aromatic with a good fruit-acid balance and a "cleaner crunch."
Falstaff: A large, attractive yellowy-pink modern apple. Very sweet, very crunchy, and juicy—perfect for tasting at farmers’ markets.
Charlton Orchards - visit their website on www.charltonorchards.com)
More Ways to Use Raw Apples
When all is said and done, there’s nothing quite like the raw crunch of a sweet and juicy apple straight from the tree. If you want to move beyond eating it plain, try using raw apples in various salads.
My favourite is to dice them finely and add them to celery for the classic Waldorf salad. They are also brilliant in a cold lunchtime salad with blue cheese and mayonnaise—the sweet crunch of the apple cuts through the rich, salty cheese perfectly.
The Amazing Health Benefits of Apples
Apart from being delicious, apples are incredibly good for you. Eating plenty of them is believed to:
Lower blood cholesterol.
Improve bowel function.
Reduce the risk of stroke, prostate cancer, type II diabetes, and asthma.
Recent research indicates that diets with the highest intake of apple phyto-nutrients were associated with a significant reduction in the incidence of lung cancer. Findings also suggest that two apples a day can reduce the damaging effects of cholesterol.
So, while the going is good, grab some of that "doctor-avoiding" advice and consume as many fresh, locally-sourced apples as you can!
