Homemade Apple Juice

Do you have a bunch of extra apples laying around that you would like to use up in a healthy and delicious way? Try making homemade apple juice! With just a couple of simple ingredients, a couple hours of cook time, and very little prep, this homemade apple juice will be stocked in your refrigerator, ready to be enjoyed!

This recipe is great for the kiddos (and for the adults, too!).

Let’s get straight into it! Here is the recipe for Homemade Apple Juice:

Tools:

Stock pot

Long handled wooden spoon

cheesecloth

mesh sieve

large bowl

quart sized mason jars with lids

Ingredients:

12-15 apples

Filtered water

1/4 cup of organic sugar

Making the Homemade Apple Juice:

1. Chop apples into quarters, remove seeds and stems. Add to large stock pot and cover with room temp filtered water. Put this on the stove and turn the burner on to high.
2. Once the apples have come to a stead rolling boil, turn down to medium heat and cover. Let boil for about an hour, until the apples have softened significantly. Stir occasionally and add more filtered water if need be.
3. When the apples are easy to crush with your wooden spoon, go ahead and smash them up against the side of the stock pot, until most of them are smashed. Then, let the mixture boil for another forty-five minutes or so, until the juice has deepened in color slightly and is a bit more opaque.

Storage:

1. Turn off the burner and let the mixture cool until it is no longer hot, just warm and workable. In the meantime, set up a bowl in your sink with a fine mesh sieve on top and a cheesecloth draped over top. Pour in the apple juice and crushed apples until the bowl is nearly full, then set the sieve over the stock pot for a moment.
2. Pour the juice evenly between two or three quart sized mason jars. Place the sieve with the cheesecloth and apples over the bowl again and squeeze the remaining juice out of the apples. Divvy out the rest of the juice into the mason jars. Add a couple of tablespoons of sugar to each full quart jar or to taste. Add cinnamon if desired, but it is really delicious without any sugar or cinnamon as well!
3. At this point, if you don’t plan on drinking the apple juice right away, feel free to properly pressure can the juice so that it will be shelf stable. In this instance, I figured we would drink the juice within the next couple weeks so I went ahead and topped them with a lid and stuck them in the fridge.
4. Now, enjoy!

Let me know what you thought of this recipe by commenting below!

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Blessings,

Anna C.