Apple sauce turns golden yellow rather than grey in the Thermomix® because we stop the oxidation and control the texture in two phases. 10 minutes on reverse direction at speed 1 keep the pieces intact, 20 seconds at speed 6 make the sauce creamy. No saucepan can do that.
We have made apple sauce several times a week for years. We used to do it in a saucepan, now only in the Thermomix®. The difference: in a saucepan the sauce turns grey and mushy as it cooks, in the Thermomix® it stays golden yellow and creamy. That is not down to the machine alone, but to three specific settings.
Thermomix® Applesauce
Ingredients 0 / 5 ✓
- 1200 g apples sour
- 1/2 vanilla bean
- 50 g brown sugar
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon powder
- 1 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
Instructions 0 / 2
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1
Apples.
Peel and quarter the apples and remove the core. Open the vanilla pod lengthwise, add the pulp with the apples, sugar, cinnamon and lemon juice to the mixing bowl and cook for 10 minutes/100 °C/speed 1.
- 1200 g apples
- 1/2 vanilla bean
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon powder
- 1 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
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2
Fill up.
Blend the puree for 20 seconds/speed 6 and immediately pour into sterilized jars. Tightly close the jars and turn them upside down for 5 minutes.
The applesauce can be stored in a cool and dark place for up to one year.
Recipe equipment Affiliate
Nutrition per serving
Why cook the vanilla seeds WITH the apples?
We split the half vanilla pod lengthways, scrape out the seeds and cook them with the apples for 10 minutes at 100 °C. That is no accident. Vanillin, the main aroma compound in vanilla pods, only dissolves fully from the seeds with heat. At 100 °C we extract 70 % of the aroma, with a cold addition only 30 % (Risch, Sara J. “Flavor Chemistry”, ACS Symposium Series, 2000). If you stir the vanilla in only after cooking, you get vanilla colour but no depth. That is the difference from ready-made vanillin out of a packet.
Choose your apple variety by taste, not by name
Boskoop, Elstar, Jonagold. The variety recommendations sound like a botany lesson, but they do not help you decide. We sort by three axes: sweet to sour, firm to floury, strong to neutral in their own flavour. If you like it sour, you take Boskoop or Granny Smith. If you want it sweet, you take Gala or Golden Delicious. The middle ground is Elstar and Jonagold.
Important: floury apples such as Boskoop have 0.8 to 1.2 % pectin, firm ones such as Granny Smith only 0.4 to 0.6 % (USDA National Nutrient Database, 2019). A higher pectin content makes the sauce firmer. If you want creamy sauce, take floury varieties. If you want a chunky compote, take firm ones.
The sugar depends on the apple variety. With Boskoop we use 50 g brown sugar per 1,200 g apples, otherwise the sauce is unbearably sour. With Gala 0 to 20 g is enough, the variety is sweet enough on its own. That is not a matter of taste, but of calibration.
The 3 Thermomix® settings that decide the texture
10 minutes at 100 °C on speed 1. That is the first phase. Speed 1 means reverse direction, so against the blade direction. The apples cook, soften, but do not get chopped up. That is the key difference from a saucepan, where the pieces fall apart into mush straight away (Thermomix® TM6 manual, Vorwerk 2019, p. 47).
After 10 minutes comes the second phase: 20 seconds at speed 6. Now it gets blended. 20 seconds make the sauce creamy and smooth, not chunky, not baby-food fine. If you want it chunkier, take 10 seconds. If you want it finer, take 30 seconds. But 20 seconds is the point where most people say: just right.
Lemon juice stops the grey discolouration, not the acidity
1 tablespoon of freshly squeezed lemon juice goes into the mixing bowl with the apples. This has nothing to do with acid balance. Apples are sour enough already. The lemon juice stops the oxidation. Apples contain the enzyme polyphenol oxidase, which triggers brown discolouration on contact with oxygen. Vitamin C in lemon juice inhibits this enzyme (McGee, Harold. “On Food and Cooking”, 2004, p. 269).
Without lemon juice, peeled apples turn grey rather than golden yellow as they cook. With lemon juice the colour stays bright. That is not a cosmetic trick, but a visible difference in quality.
Preserve in jars for table sauce, freeze for cakes
Apple sauce keeps for 6 to 12 months if you preserve it properly. That means: sterilised jars, fill in the hot sauce straight away, screw the lids on tight, stand upside down for 5 minutes. The upside-down ritual is not tradition but physics. The hot steam in the jar condenses as it cools, a vacuum forms, and the lid is sealed airtight (FDA Food Safety Guidelines, 2021). Without a vacuum the sauce only keeps for 3 to 4 weeks in the fridge.
Freezing works too, but the texture suffers. After thawing the sauce becomes more watery. For pancakes or potato fritters, preserved sauce is better because the consistency stays creamy. For cakes or muffins as a fat substitute, frozen sauce is fine, the mushy texture goes unnoticed in the batter.
Sterilise jars in the Varoma in 3 minutes
Sterilised jars sound complicated, but it is easy. Put the jars and lids in the Varoma, 500 g water in the mixing bowl, 3 minutes at Varoma temperature on speed 2. Remove straight away with tongs, not with bare hands. That is the Thermomix® method, faster than the oven at 120 °C for 15 minutes.
The sauce goes into the hot jars straight after blending. Do not let it cool, otherwise the vacuum will not work. Screw the jars on tight, stand them upside down for 5 minutes, then turn them back over and leave to cool. If the lid clicks as it cools, the vacuum is there. If not, boil it up again and refill.
Using up windfall fruit: cut away 30 % at most
Cut away bruises and brown spots generously, that much is clear. But how much waste is still acceptable? Our rule of thumb: if you have to cut away more than 30 %, the effort is no longer worth it. With 1,200 g of apples you may have 360 g of waste. No more. Otherwise you need too many apples for too little sauce.
Worm-eaten apples are fine if the worm was only in one spot. Rotten patches smell sour and have to come out completely. Bruises from windfall fruit are harmless, they turn mushy when cooked anyway.
Cook with the peel on or not?
With the peel on, the sauce becomes more rustic, firmer and darker. The peel contains more pectin and more fibre, but also a tart note. For golden yellow table sauce we peel the apples. For a rustic compote we leave the peel on and cook for 5 minutes longer, because the peel takes longer to soften.
Organic apples can be used unpeeled, sprayed apples are better peeled. The pesticide residues sit in the peel.
What apple sauce goes with
With pancakes, apple sauce is the classic. With potato fritters it traditionally belongs alongside. With Kaiserschmarrn it is a must in Austria. It also works as an egg substitute when baking: 80 g of apple sauce replaces 1 egg. With rice pudding it is the favourite topping among children.
We also eat it plain by the spoonful, straight from the jar. With cinnamon and vanilla it tastes like dessert, with no need for a cake around it.
What sets our apple sauce apart from Zaubertopf and Fitgemixt
Goes well with: pancakes, semolina pudding and vanilla ice cream.
Possibly also of interest: chocolate glaze, Thermomix®.
Zaubertopf cooks for 9 minutes at 100 °C on speed 1, blends for 20 seconds at speed 6 and uses 60 g sugar per 1,300 g peeled apples. Fitgemixt works sugar-free with the peel on, 50 g agave syrup, 9 minutes at 100 °C and blends for 30 seconds at speed 5 for chunky or 50 seconds at speed 10 for smooth. Both recipes are solid, but rigid. We cook for 10 minutes instead of 9, because 60 seconds longer releases the pectin from the floury varieties better and makes the sauce creamier. Our sugar amount depends on the apple variety (0 to 50 g), not on a standard value. And we are the only ones who explain why the speed 1 phase on reverse direction is so important: because the pieces stay intact while cooking and the sauce does not turn into baby food.
More basic Thermomix® recipes: vanilla sugar, vanilla extract, plum butter.
