[Editor's Note: Thanks to Daniel Gasteiger who has submitted this guest blog post for us to share. You can find more of his preserving recipes in his new book, Yes, You Can!, and on his two blogs, Your Small Kitchen Garden and Home Kitchen Garden.]

As summer rushes into autumn, some folks are already sampling “early apples” which means they’re picking normal apples ahead of time because they just can’t wait. Happily, for many of us, apple season stretches well over two months, and growers have tricks to keep apples “fresh” well into the winter.
Still, the best time to buy apples is in season when you can get them inexpensively from local growers. And, if you have even one apple tree at home, you may be overwhelmed as several bushels of fruit become ripe within a two or three week period.
If you’re looking at more apples than you can use in-season, make new foods by trying on some of these preservation methods:
Canning Apples

Perhaps the most obvious way to preserve apples at home is to can them. Recognizing that canning means “cooking,” plan to use canned apples in baked goods when you take them out of storage; they’re excellent in apple crisp, apple pies, apple dumplings, and other products that call for cut-up apples.
If you like applesauce, making your own and then canning it produces one of the most accurately preserved products you can achieve. It’s uncanny: home-canned applesauce tastes identical to cooked-fresh applesauce.
If you don’t normally eat applesauce, consider adding it to your larder anyway. You can find hundreds of recipes for baked goods that substitute applesauce for at least some of the oil that typically acts as moistener. Experiment and you’ll quickly learn to substitute applesauce into your favorite recipes.
Freezing Apples
A thawed apple is pretty mushy, but that’s OK if you’re making it into applesauce or cooking it up in marinades, sauces, and pastries. Packing apple slices in syrup made of 1 part sugar and 9 parts water may result in firmer slices after thawing. However, simply core, peel, and slice the apples, and you can freeze them in bags or other containers where they’ll keep very well.
Whatever way you plan to pack them, as soon as you cut up apples for freezing, immerse them in water flavored with lemon juice: a half cup of lemon juice per gallon of water. Let them soak for ten or more minutes before processing and they’re far less likely to turn brown while frozen.
Fruit pies, assembled but not cooked, freeze and thaw faithfully. For a generic 9-inch pie pan, prepare 4 – 5 cups of cored, peeled, and cut up apples. Mix 1 cup of sugar with 3 tablespoons of flour and toss this together with the apples. Line a pie pan with dough from your favorite pie crust recipe, heap the apple mixture into the pan, and cover with pie dough. The finished pie will fit into a 2-gallon zipper freezer bag. To bake the pie, start it (frozen) at 325F degrees for 20 minutes. Then raise the temperature to 400 degrees and bake until the crust is golden brown… 40 to 60 more minutes.
Dehydrating Apples

Apples, cored and sliced, make great snacks when you dehydrate them until they’re leathery—like raisins or prunes. In small pieces, dried apples add texture to sweet breads such as banana bread and zucchini bread.
Dry apples until they’re brittle and you can process them into powder as you might dried tomatoes. Powdered tomatoes rehydrate into something very much like applesauce.
Apples make great fruit leathers, and having a mild flavor they can provide a great foundation for leathers you flavor with other fruits. For example, mix apples and cherries or apples and blueberries about half-and-half, and you’ll produce leathers that taste more like cherries or blueberries than they do apples.
When you prep apples for leathers, core them but leave the skins on. Puree them in a blender or food processor and add a touch of water or juice to thin the puree so it flows (but keep it thick). If your dehydrator has leathers pans, oil them very lightly and put an eighth- to a quarter-inch of puree in each one. Dry until the leathers are no longer sticky—4 to 8 hours at 140F degrees.
After they cool, roll leathers in waxed paper or plastic wrap and store them in air-tight containers at room temperature for a year or longer. Vacuum seal the containers and your leathers may keep as long as 20 years.
