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Apple Varieties and How to Use Them

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Breakdown of apple varieties and how to use them

Photo: Pixabay

Not all apples are the same.  With over 7000 varieties of apples, it is wise to learn which types are best for what you want the apple.  Some apples are more soft, some more crunchy and crispy, some mealy, some tart, some sweet, and so on.  Of course, which apple you use can be all subjective, but in the world of apple connoisseurs, there are some apples more suitable for different needs.

Here is a list of some of the more popular apple varieties and how to best use them.

Take a bite of a crisp apple from the apple tree

Photo: Pixabay

Fresh Eating Apple Varieties

There are so many different tastes for different people’s likings.  Here are some of the most popular.

  • Braeburn
  • Fuji
  • Gala
  • Cameo
  • Golden Delicious
  • Granny Smith (for a tart taste)
  • Honeycrisp
  • Empire
  • Pink Lady or Cripps Pink
Baked whole apples with cinnamon and raisins

Photo: Pixabay

Baking Apple Varieties

Popular apples for pies, apple sauce, apple butter, and baking whole.

  • Granny Smith  (in our opinion the BEST pie apple)
  • Braeburn
  • Golden Delicious
  • McIntosh
  • Rome Beauty
  • Cortland
  • Jonagold
  • Jonathan
  • Gala
  • Melrose
  • Honeycrisp
  • Winesap
  • Cameo
  • Avoid these apples in pie because they become mealy with baking:  Cortland, Gala, and Red Delicious
Hot apple cider tastes good on a cold fall day.

Photo: Pixabay

Cider Apple Varieties

It is proven that the best tasting cider comes from using a variety of all types of apples.  One neighbor who owns a press once told me “The more varieties, the better!”

  • Gala
  • Rome Beauty
  • Golden Delicious
  • Grimes Golden
  • Jonathan
  • Red Delicious
  • McIntosh
  • Fuji
  • Braeburn
  • Jonagold
  • Cortland

Realize that these lists are not complete by any stretch of the imagination. Remember the 7000 plus varieties?  Our shorter more concise list will be a good place to start!

As you decide what apple you want to have on your own lot, for a great harvest, be sure to check your local garden center for what apple trees do well in your area.  Not all apple trees like to be planted just anywhere. Temperature plays an important role in producing a worthwhile crop.  Read How to Choose an Apple Tree to learn more.

Use these 3 important criteria to choose an apple tree

 

A basic breakdown of most popular apples and how to use them best.

 

Apple Chips and Apple Pie Filling

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We’ve eaten fresh long apple skin peels, made delicious applesauce, and rich apple butter.  Here are two other ways that I use to preserve my apples – apple chips and apple pie filling.  The tips I give are from my own personal experience.

Apple chips

Dehydrated apple chips

Photo by Cook Your Life at Pixabay

I love my food dehydrator.  The first time I needed one, I borrowed my Mom’s dehydrator that she bought back in the early 70s.  It worked very well but it was pretty loud.  I finally bought a newer dehydrator and I love how quiet it is.  It also has a larger capacity than the older one, so I can process more produce per batch.

dehydrating sliced apples

If you don’t have a food dehydrator, you can use your oven but you’ll need to be a bit more vigilant about checking on the apples so they don’t burn.  The dehydrator allows you to use lower temperatures than most ovens will permit so you can ignore them for a few hours before checking to see if they’re done.  

 

apple slices for drying into apple chips

Photo by Wolffsfa at Pixabay

There’s nothing fancy when it comes to apple chips. 

The biggest trick, in my opinion, for the best apple chip is to cut the slices as thin as you can manage.  That is why I like using a food processor.  It allows for a consistent thickness of all the slices and it also allows you to quickly slice a lot of apples.  If you have boxes of fruit to go through, speed is something that cannot be underrated.   You can also use a sharp knife to cut slices as thin as you can manage.  

Spread the slices out on a tray from your food dehydrator and follow your dehydrator instructions for the right setting.  If using your oven, place apple slices on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.  Heat oven to 200 degrees and allow the apples to heat for 1.5 – 2 hours.  Or, for a little faster time, heat oven to 225 and cook apples for 45 minutes to 1 hour. 

Optional: Before baking or placing in the dehydrator, you can sprinkle the slices with cinnamon or another mixture of spices to give them extra flavor.  

Pumpkin spice mix is yummy:

  • 2 tbsp. ground cinnamon
  • 1 tbsp. ground ginger
  • 1 ½ tsp. ground nutmeg
  • 1 ½ tsp. ground cloves

Apple Pie Filling

apple pie lattice top

Photo by Dusty Toes at Pixabay

I don’t really have a recipe for apple pie filling.  I’m sure there are wonderful recipes around but my approach is to simply place as many sliced apples in a bowl as I plan to put in my pie, sprinkle with as much cinnamon as I think would be a good amount for a pie (a couple of teaspoons?), add a couple of teaspoons of sugar (have you noticed I don’t like adding much sugar to my apple products?), add a couple of tablespoons of flour, and then mix and place in pie crust.  

homemade apple pie

Photo by Snapwire Snaps at Pixabay

If I’m planning to preserve and bottle pie filling, I only add the cinnamon before packing and processing.  I save the sugar and flour to add later when I open the jars to use the apples.  That way I can use the apples for a variety of baked goods.  If I use them for apple crisp, I don’t add any sugar at all since the topping has enough sugar to make for a sweet dessert.

I love the fall for many reasons.  The cool weather, the falling leaves… and the delicious, fresh apples!  

Click BACK for how I make

APPLESAUCE and APPLE BUTTER

Western Gardens | Utah

 

Favorite Apple Varieties and How To Preserve Them

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Welcome Apple Lovers!  Glad you dropped in.

I love apples!  There is such a wide variety of apple trees to plant and they are all delicious in their own right.  As a mother, I now used different apple varieties for different occasions.  I have several favorite apple varieties, but let me first share where my first love of apples began.  Maybe you had similar experiences.

bushels of apple varieties

Photo by Sladkovskaivka at Pixabay

long apple peel to eat

Photo by ChrisWoehri at Pixabay

My memories are vivid of sitting at my mom’s feet as she sat on the porch and peeled apples for apple pie.  I loved to pick out and eat the longest pieces of apple peel from her scrap bowl.  

We moved to Virginia when I was in 4th grade and we would go apple picking as a family in the crisp fall weather.  We’d then have boxes and boxes of apples sitting in the garage and I loved picking out the biggest apple from each variety and eating it plain or with peanut butter. 

Boxes of apples

One time I ate so many apples in one sitting that I made myself sick.  In fact, I did this more than once.  For some people, that would result in an aversion to the food that made them sick, but I love apples so much that this was not a deterrent for me.

The mature fruit trees, including Golden Delicious Apples and a Jonagold type of apple, were one of the reasons we purchased the home.

Jonagold apple tree

Photo by Kapa65 at Pixabay

The first year there, both trees produced around a bazillion apples each.  We basically made apple sauce and pie filling from so many apples.  We not only used the fresh picked apples, but also the still usable windfall apples. In the years since, we’ve managed to expand the variety of things we do with our apples.  

Our favorite preserving methods are: apple sauce, apple butter, dried apple rings (apple chips), and apple pie filling.  

Some useful tools for different apple recipes:

  • hand powered food strainer/sauce maker
  • food processor with slicing blade
  • food dehydrator
  • crock pot
  • stick blender. 

Of course, if all you have is a knife and a large pot, you can make it work!

peeling a red apple

Photo by JackMac34 at Pixabay

Read further for a few tips for success and a couple of the recipes we use for enjoying this amazing fruit well after the last one has been plucked from the tree.  I include the tools we use for making them.

Click NEXT for my favorite apples and methods for

APPLESAUCE and APPLE BUTTER and APPLE CHIPS and APPLE PIE FILLING

Western Gardens | Utah

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