What shall I do with all these apples?

cider is typically made with a press, not a juicer, but who knows? Make a little and see how it goes! Have you ever made apple butter? If you're just sick to death of all of it, give the apples to the local food pantry for the poor.

I do give lots of the garden produce away - the nice thing about living in a village is that we all leave boxes of fruit and vetegables by the front gate at this time of year so that people can just help themselves.

The trouble with apples is that everyone round here has so many of them that you can't even give them away!

Two of my apple trees produce nice sweet eating apples, but the other trees have quite sharp tasting ones which are better cooked (though they aren't cooking apples). I thought juicing them might be much the same as pressing them .... I guess it might be worth a try.

also: Apple Dolls!

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/features/election/images/group4.jpg

the milk and apples are needed for the pigs now

Apple.. butter?

I think apple butter is a bit like lemon curd. Only made with apples.

Yikes, crosspost with that horror. (not Ronan)

apple butter is like spiced applesauce, except it is processed more, so it has a very fine and creamy texture. You eat it on toast or biscuits. American biscuits, that is.

Those apple dolls are the things that nightmares are made of! *shudder*

apple butter is the best thing ever! it s like a heavier, thicker spicier applesauce, you can put it on sandwiches and stuff. great on pork tenderloin!

"hey! how'd you like it if someone picked apples offa YOU?!"

those appletons are like something from The Wicker Man.

Nicole and Natalie Appleton??

No i just called the apple people that

I don't think I even really know what applesauce is - is it the stuff you have with roast pork?

A) potato gun (slightly modified)
B) pick-up truck
C) late night
D) booze
E) targets

Nick, there's not an enormous leap of intellect required here.

I have a potato gun! (I have two, actually, for late night chase-each-other-round-the-garden fights!!)

Oooops, too quick - the answer is yes.

The best way to may cider is to freeze the apples. Once they are hard, triple bag them and smash them with a mallet, thoroughly. put all the bits in a sterilised brewing bin (both bin and sterilising powder available from your local home brew shop). I'd use an airlock as well for cider. Keep somewhere warm (ish about 20?C) and allow to ferment for about a week or until it stops producing carbon dioxide gas (stops bubbling every now and again)

Strain off the liquor, use a muslin bag to squeeze out to remaining liquor from the fruit pulp. Rack off into demijohns, or back into the brew bin once it has been cleaned and re-sterilised. With an air lock on let it stand in a cool place (a cellar would do nicely) for a couple of weeks to allow some of the yeast to settle out. Siphon off into sterilised bottles adding half a teaspoon of sugar if you want bubbly cider (and why the hell you'd want that I don't know) to each pint of cider. Cap the bottles with a crown capper. Leave the bottles in the cellar for at least a month before drinking. Happy drinking.

Wow - thanks, Ed!

Instead of freezing and smashing up the apples, would it be okay to just chop them in a food processor? (or do they not have to come into contact with the metal blades or something?)

Freezing the apples causes the cells in the apple to swell and burst releasing more juice. Don't forget you need the skins for the yeast and its probably wise to throw in a few un-frozen apples as well, although yeast is pretty hardy.

you can of course drink the cider at any time after fermentation, but it will be a bit rough and the yeast can give you the runs. A packet of oak chips is the brew bin can round off the flavour quite nicely, they can go in the racking bin as well. If you want a less cloudy end product then you can put some irish moss or isinglass in the racking bin.

I grew up in Gloucestershire, and lots of the farmers there made great big vats of scrumpy cider. Rumours were that they used to chuck a dead sheep into it, but that may have just been local scaremongering.

I've got a recipe for beer with ham hock tossed in somewhere, I'll try and dig it out. Its not an unknown practice.

I wrote my mom for her apple butter recipe and look what she wrote back!

I think it works better on top of the stove than in a Crock Pot, because it evaporates quicker on the stove, but then you have to stir it from time to time to make sure it doesn't stick. Really, I think it's just apples and cinnamon and cloves. Surely there's some sugar though. You just slowly cook the crap out of it until it's the right consistency.

I love my mom!

oh also! Dried apples!

teeny, does that go all brown and caramelised and googy and is spreadable?

pretty much, I don't know about carmelized, but yeah, it's a spread.

i've never made it myself but i buy a commercial one called Suma Pear and Apple Spread.

You could do one of these, only with apples!
http://www.techhouse.org/projects/balls1.JPG

And then drain off the detritus to make cider!

Make toffee apples and hit the fairgrounds! (And get attacked by people who own that franchise...)

I've got a recipe for apple chicken somewhere, if that sounds appealing (no pun meant, honest). I think. Wait, I don't. I can write one down, though.

(I've made it, I just haven't written it down before.)

wow, this is all useful to me too, as I've had a bumper crop of apples this year!

sarcasm doesn't suit you, markh.

No, really, I have! And I have one that looks like an arse (unfortunately, That's Life isn't on anymore for me to send it to).

And Mark from Oxford sends us this rather cheeky item from his orchard!

...it is now being bitten into by my colleague sitting next to me!

apple crumble

Your colleague is biting into your arse? You work in a wild office there, Mark.

Thanks again for all the recipes and suggestions! I'd love to hear Tep's recipe for apple chicken (you don't need to make it a precise recipe, just a list of what ingredients you used - I can work out the rest)

I'm doing pan fried pork fillet with apple slices and flamed with Calvados for supper tonight, and the cider making starts on Saturday!! I think smashing hell out of bags of frozen apples with a mallet will greatly reduce my stress levels, and will be most therapeutic.

Oh yeah, apple chicken. Okay, basically this went like this, and you can do it with pork chops, too:

Onions, sliced.
Apples, chopped, peel on if you like (and I do).
Little bit of apple juice maybe, but you've got Calvados so that instead.
Little bit of mustard, smooth (not French's or anything, but otherwise whatever you like; for this I like a dark brown sweet mustard, like some of the better honey mustards that still have a bite to them)
Optionally, a dash of spice (hot sauce, chile, what have you) or cinnamon. For whatever reason, I don't think it works well if you use both -- not in this recipe.

In pan, heat a little oil, just enough to keep things from sticking, and sear chicken to crisp skin if skin it has; flip so skinside is up, add onions, stir until they soften, and add apples. Reduce heat a bit, keep stirring, and see how much juice the apples are letting off -- if any. Add a little Calvados if they're not, or if it's only a tiny bit. Cover, reduce to a simmer, and let cook for twenty minutes or so. Uncover, stir, and break up apples from time to time (you're basically making a savory applesauce that the chicken cooks in; you can also simply cook the apples and onions together and add the bit of mustard, and have it as a side). Add Calvados as needed to keep things moist saucey.

When the chicken is fully cooked and the sauce is the consistency you want, add a little mustard and the bit of hot sauce or cinnamon -- just enough to be noticeable in the apple-onion.

(Optionally, if you have cider jelly, you can use that in place of or in addition to the Calvados: it makes the chicken a bit more glazed. The original version of this recipe used cider jelly and onion, and was later changed because I ran out of cider jelly and was living in New Orleans, where they don't know what that is.)

When life gives you apples, make appleade.

nah, make booze

Boozy appleade.

Core and slice enough to fill a big stockpot (leave the skins on for bite), add a load of cinnamon, a cup of white wine, a good dash of lemon juice, a third of a bag of sugar and a couple of handfuls of sultanas and cook down for a bit. When it's mushy you have ready made compote/filling/whatever. Box it up in empty ice cream tubs nad it freezes pretty well. I recommend making pie, or strudel, though they all pale next to the magnificence of CRUMBLE.