A Fond Fall Welcome to Apple Season

September means apple season. Just over the mountains, Eastern Washington apple orchards are brimming with fruit. Washington state grows the best apples in the world (though I suppose I’m a little biased).

Maybe you are lucky enough to have access to these beautiful orchards, or maybe you’ve just noticed apples on sale at the local grocery store. Either way, now’s the time to stock up on delicious Washington apples. With some clever preserving techniques, you can find yourself eating local apples all year long.

Canning Apples

Wash, peel, core, and quarter or slice your apples. Drop into a solution of 2 T. salt and 2 T. vinegar per 1 gal. of water. That prevents darkening. Then drain, rinse, and boil them for 5 minutes (in either thin sugar syrup or plain water). Then pack your hot fruit into hot, very clean jars, leaving 1⁄2 - inch headspace. Pour boiling liquid from the cooking over up to your headspace limit. Put on lids. Process in boiling water — for either pints or quarts: 20 minutes at altitudes 1,000 feet and lower; 25 minutes at 1,001–3,000 feet; 30 minutes at 3001–6,000 feet; and 35 minutes at above 6,000 feet.

Canned Applesauce (and Other Fruit Purees)

I make lots of applesauce. It’s a good way to preserve apples that wouldn’t keep otherwise. Cut large fruit into pieces. Simmer until soft. Add a small amount of water, if needed, to prevent sticking. Put through food strainer or mill. Add sugar to taste. Reheat to simmering (185–210˚F) and pack hot into hot jars, leaving 1⁄2 - inch headspace. Adjust lids, and waterbath can. From sea level to 1,000 feet altitude, process pints 15 minutes, quarts 20 minutes; from 1,001 to 3,000 feet, process pints 20 minutes, quarts 25 minutes; from 3,001 to 6,000 feet, process pints 20 minutes, quarts 30 minutes; above 6,000 feet, process pints 25 minutes, quarts 35 minutes.

Freezing Apples for Pie

For apples to use in making pies and so on, just wash, peel, core, and slice them. About 50 lb. of apples will make about 35 frozen pints. To keep them from turning dark, quarter (or slice) them into a solution of 1⁄2 c. salt per 1 gal. water. Or else dunk them into boiling water for 11⁄2–2 minutes. Then drain the apples, rinse them under cold water, and drain again.

Method 1:

Scald, drain, chill, cover with a thin syrup (1 c. sugar per quart of water plus 1⁄2 t. ascorbic acid), leave headspace, and freeze.

Or Method 2:

Mix 1 qt. apple slices evenly with 1 t. ascorbic acid and 1⁄2 c. sugar. Then put into plastic bags or freezer boxes, seal, and freeze.

Or Method 3:

No sugar. Just pack ’em plain. The slices break apart quite easily while still frozen for making apple pie or crisp, or you can add a small amount of water and make applesauce.

Or Method 4:

Freeze whole apples, unpeeled. Just wash, put into plastic bag, seal, and place in freezer. To use frozen whole apples, thaw under cold running water until they can be peeled. Then remove the core and slice. (Work fast; an apple that thaws before peeling darkens.)

Freezing Applesauce

Applesauce turns out nicer, I think, canned than frozen, but you can freeze it by just making it, then cooling, packaging, and freezing.

Drying Apples

You have to slice them; they aren’t dried whole. Fully ripe sweet apples are ideal. Usually they are peeled and cored and what’s left is made into doughnuttype rings about 1⁄4 - inch thick to oven dry, 1⁄8 - inch to sun dry. Let the slices fall into cold water while you are working to prevent “rusting,” 1⁄4 c. lemon juice or 1 t. ascorbic acid per 2 c. cold water. If your apples are small, wormy, or too mealy to make into doughnut rings, cut into slices of whatever shape you can. Old-timers then strung them on a thread and hung them in the sun, but now we usually just spread them out on a surface. Using an oven or dehydrator, dry them at 140˚F on a cookie sheet — turning once in a while — until they are leathery.

Celebrate Fall with a "Pop!"

As the leaves start to change color here in Seattle, the wind starts up and the temperature drops, I can’t help but think that fall is in the air. Just breathing in the cool air conjures up images of steaming hot cider, reading by the fireplace, and taking chilly walks through piles of collected leaves. Of course, one of my favorite aspects of this season is the food—pumpkin and acorn squash and cranberries and anything spiced with cinnamon!

Carla Emery shares my appreciation for fall’s bounty with the delightful crop of maize. It’s a bread, it’s a vegetable, it’s a decoration. The husks can be made into paper, rope, or stuffing. The cobs provide fuel to burn. The stalks and leaves are as good as hay for winter-feeding. The vegetable you might know as corn has a rich history of its own and provides one of my favorite fall snacks—popcorn!

An A-maize-ing History Lesson

The Latin name for corn is Zea mays. The word “Zea” is ancient Greek for “cereal” and comes from the verb “to live.” Similarly, the Native American word for corn was “maize,” which means, “that which sustains.” To Europeans, the word “corn” translates to the hard kernels of any common grain: wheat, oats, barley . . . or maize. That’s why the pioneers called maize “corn” — and why Europeans are still confused when we say “corn.”

Corn was first created by the genius of Native Americans thousands of years ago from an annual grass that had an extraordinarily high natural mutation rate. There’s nothing comparable to it among all the wild grasses; corn was created by farmers’ careful seed selections over the millennia (and is still being thus “created”). All the original corns, of course, were Native American. It was they who originally developed the flour, hominy, pod, popcorn, flint, and dent varieties, and all the colors and color combinations of corn.

POPCORN

Popcorn (Zea mays var. praecox or everta) is the only kind of corn that pops and turns inside out. It is considered by archaeologists to be the most ancient of the corns, popped and served for thousands of years. Popcorn is tougher than other corns (it has an extra hard outer covering called endosperm) and is difficult to work with unless you pop or grind it. When it has some moisture content (about 12 percent) and is heated, pressure builds up inside the tough outer covering that is preventing that water vapor from escaping until the whole thing explodes with a pop!

Popcorn takes longer to mature than most sweet corns. Harvest it as you would other field corns, first drying it in the field. Then hang it in the house like seed corn and dry another 3–4 weeks. The kernels of popcorn need to be hard on the outside in order to get the proper explosion of the remaining moisture at the center of the kernel when it’s heated. Popcorn is also the hardest of all corns to shell. To keep from hurting your hand, shell by rubbing one ear of corn against another or cover your hand with an old sock before you rub kernels away from the cob. Store popcorn in tightly lidded glass jars (so kernels don’t become too dry to pop).

Popping

Dutch ovens are good popcorn poppers. So is an iron frying pan with a lid or a commercial popper. Allow ½ cup dry corn for every 1 gallon popped corn that you want. Melt about 1 T. cooking oil in your Dutch oven or some other heavy pan with a tight-fitting lid. When the oil is hot enough to get broken lines across it and is just starting to smoke, it’s ready for the popcorn. Add the popcorn, cover, and cook over medium heat. Shake the pan on top of the heat constantly until you don’t hear much more popping; then immediately take it off the heat to prevent burning. To butter the popcorn, melt some butter in another small pan, pour it over the popcorn, and stir to mix. Sprinkle with salt if you like.

Classic popcorn is wonderful with just a little butter and salt, but Carla Emery has recipes for some great seasonal gourmet versions as well!

Cinnamon-Raisin Popcorn Mix -- Mix together 2 T. melted butter, 3 T. brown sugar, 1⁄2 t. ground cinnamon, 1⁄4 c. raisins, and about 1⁄4 c. apple chunks. Toss together with 8–10 c. freshly popped popcorn.

Cheese-Coated Popcorn -- Grate cheese to make 1⁄2 cup. Sprinkle cheese onto still-warm popped corn. Mix well. If you bake this for 15 minutes, it will dry out and be a bit crisper.

Honey-Nut Gourmet Popcorn -- Mix together 2 qt. freshly popped corn, 1 c. chopped peanuts, 1 c. raisins, and 1 c. sunflower seeds. Heat 1⁄2 c. honey and 1⁄2 c. water together in a pan, stirring, until you get to hard-ball stage. Add 1⁄2 c. butter and stir to melt. Pour the sweet mix over the dry mixture, stirring until the kernels are all coated. Spread it out on 2 greased cookie sheets. Bake 15 minutes at 350 degrees F.