Should You Mix Apple Types For Homemade Applesauce?

You heard it here: Applesauce is seriously underrated. Sure, the stuff you get from the jar can be boring, but homemade applesauce is easy to make and you can easily customize your recipe to suit your preferences. It doesn't take long to make, especially if you use an Instant Pot, and even if you're cooking your apples on the stovetop, it's quick and simple. In fact, peeling your apples is probably the most time-consuming part of the whole recipe.

One important part of making homemade applesauce is ensuring you have the right balance of acidity and sweetness. One way to boost the natural acidity of apples is to add a little lemon juice to your applesauce. Southern Living recommends adding sliced lemon to your apples as they simmer, making sure to remove all the seeds. Another way to balance sweetness and acidity is to choose your apples carefully, as each apple variety is unique and will affect your finished product.

The Spruce Eats and Southern Living agree that the best applesauce uses a combination of apple varieties — and there's no wrong combination. Southern Living recommends a mixture of apple types to give your applesauce a more complex flavor and a more varied texture, as each variety cooks up a bit differently. Meanwhile, The Spruce Eats says that choosing a sweeter apple, like Golden Delicious, coupled with a tart variety, like McIntosh, and rounded out with a crisp apple like Braeburn would give your applesauce an ideal flavor and consistency, though there's no limit to the apple assortments you can create.

Depending on your apple combination, you may not need to sweeten your applesauce at all. But if you do, Bon Appétit cautions against over-sweetening homemade applesauce, and they recommend using small amounts of brown sugar, demerara, or turbinado sugars for more complex flavor. Once you've added a little sweetener, taste your concoction, and if the applesauce still isn't as sweet as you'd like, you can add maple syrup or honey at the table, allowing everyone to sweeten to their liking. And if you find that you've been overzealous in your mixed-variety applesauce production, there are a number of ways to use leftover applesauce, including making your own fruit leather or as a step toward homemade apple butter.