No-Waste Apple Preserving

I am on a waste-not kick right now.  I am horrified when I see food thrown out at restaurants.  Do you have any idea how many chickens would enjoy the food that gets thrown out everyday?  (Not to mention starving children in Africa).  Although we can't send our food scraps to Africa we CAN give it to our chickens, or our neighbours' chickens.  Our chickens eat just about everything we eat and so our scraps are well taken care of.  Not only do they lessen our chicken-feed bill, but they turn those scraps into eggs!  Beautiful, healthy, free range eggs. 

I came home with a case of gorgeous organic gala apples.  And I mean gorgeous.  Not a scab, not a bruise.  The apples off our tree are apple sauce-worthy only but these ones you could do anything with.  I had in mind dehydrating them to make apple chips.  My kids love apple chips, and they store well.  We have an old apple peeler/corer which will peel, core and spiral the apples with the turn of a handle.  They make slicing and coring apples a breeze, especially these uniform-sized, firm apples.  I pulled back the peeler though, and left the peels on.  Removing the peel removes valuable nutrients as well. 

My husband whizzed through 20 lb of apples with the corer/slicer, which is about the max our food dryer will hold.  It is a homemade dehydrator made from these plans, using an old griddle as a heater and a fan taken from an old refrigeration unit.  (My husband is handy that way).  So, apple chips are on the way.

Apple corer/peeler

Apples ready to be dehydrated.

These lovely red and white apple cores, though, couldn't be wasted.  We have an Omega Juicer 1000 and it is fantastic.  We shot those apple cores through in a few minutes and had amazing, sweet juice.  We didn't stop at juice though... we decided to try for apple cider vinegar.  As with many things we think will be too hard to try, it is actually rediculously simple.  Put your juice in containers about 3/4 full, cover with cheesecloth, stir every day, wait 3 to 4 weeks, then strain through layers of cheese cloth to remove the mother of vinegar.  You can then bottle it and use it, or pasteurize it which makes it more shelf stable but takes away the "raw" benefits. 

After making the apple juice, you are left with about 1 cup full of dry, fiberous apple seeds/skin since this is all that doesn't pass through the screen.  That's it!  And the chickens eat that up in a few seconds.  20 lb of apples reduced to a few cups of apple fiber.  A loaded dehydrator, and 2 bottles of homemade apple cider vinegar started.  (Or stop at apple juice and drink it!)  Waste not, want not!









Apples on the dryer.









Apple cores and bits that
we turned into juice





Juicer making juice!