We love apple pies, and over the years I’ve become pretty good at making delicious Dutch apple pies from scratch-I’ll share the recipe for that down below-but making an apple pie from scratch can run off with a lot of your time.
For years I made only two apple pies per year (on Thanksgiving) for this very reason.
That was before I discovered I can make the crust and prep the apple pie filling ahead of time and freeze it until I want to use it.
In the past week I prepped and froze enough apple pie filling for 12 pies, each in a one-gallon freezer bag.
I set some time aside to do this in batches, so I didn’t burn myself out in the kitchen. I worked on this over two days. I will make several crusts for the freezer on a different day. In case you want to make a pie today, I’ll leave that recipe down below.
It’s not a good idea to load up your freezer with a bunch of room temperature food all at once because you’ll drop the temp, so I determined how many gallon bags I could fit single layer in my freezers-I’ve got my drawer freezer in the kitchen, where I was able to fit 4 bags (2 on each shelf), and I had some room in one of the garage freezers for two more bags to chill.
I freeze them flat in a single layer so I can stack them later once they freeze through. If you stack them in the freezer before they freeze, it will take an extremely long time for the middles to freeze-especially those bags in the middle of the stack.
I use 7-8 apples per gallon bag, and I like using golden delicious for my apple pies and crisps, but some people feel that golden delicious are too soft for baking. Don’t let people tell you what to do. Use whatever apples you want.
Before I start peeling and slicing let me just say this…
Before I bought an apple peeler/corer (which was just this year) it took me 20 minutes to peel, core, and slice seven apples for an apple pie by hand. I know this because I used to calculate how much time I needed in the kitchen to make two apple pies for Thanksgiving dinner so they would still be warm for dessert but set up enough to eat.
This year it took me 40 minutes to peel, core, slice, mix, package, and clean up from prepping six pies worth of apples for the freezer.
Wowza. Super time saver.
It was so much easier to preserve apples with my counter mount (suction) apple corer/slicer that I went back to the orchard and bought another bushel to put up some applebutter for the first time. If you’re like me, you find it super easy to justify why you don’t NEED to purchase kitchen gadgets because you can do the work and save the money. I’ve realized some kitchen gadgets make it easier for me to cook from scratch which means I cook a wider variety of things from scratch more often-and this gadget is one of those things. I highly recommend spending $30 to get a peeler/corer/slicer if you don’t already have one because you are not buying a kitchen gadget, you are buying a little piece of sanity.
It is just as easy for me to avoid making delicious things because they take too much time to prep/make/clean up after as it is to talk myself out of buying gadgets that make it easier to make the thing.
I just bought this apple peeler/corer/slicer and have used it a lot already. I can’t speak to any longevity through experience yet, but it seems very well made and I believe it will last at least a few seasons-certainly worth $30.
One more thing before you dive into peeling, coring, and slicing those apples: prep the filling ingredients first.
Plan out how many gallon bags you want to fill and prepare the filling for each bag. You need one large bowl that you’ll toss the filling ingredients with the apples before putting them in freezer bags. In separate prep bowls, mix the following together for each filling:
5 1⁄2 cups peeled cored sliced apples (about 7 apples)
1 tablespoon lemon juice-add to sliced apples and toss before adding mixture
Combine in prep bowls:
1⁄2 cup granulated sugar
1⁄4 cup brown sugar, packed
Pinch of salt
3 tablespoons flour
1⁄2 teaspoon ground cinnamon (we like a little cinnamon, feel free to use 1 teaspoon)
1⁄8 teaspoon nutmeg
Once you wash, core, peel, and slice all 7 apples and they are in your large bowl, cut each apple in half vertically (because they are all connected in a spiral and you want to separate all the slices so they are evenly coated) and toss with 1 tablespoon lemon juice. Then add the mixture and carefully mix to coat all the apples. Using your hands to mix is best for this because you want to avoid breaking the apple slices as much as possible.
Transfer the apples to a gallon freezer bag. This can be tricky and sticky. To make it easier, put the gallon freezer bag into some sort of vessel like a large pitcher that will hold the bag upright to make it easier for you to dump the apples in and scrape all the goo from the bowl into it.
Press as much air out of the bag as you can and smoosh flat. Sometimes these bags can leak or just be sticky, so I like to lay them on either a baking sheet or large casserole dish to set in the freezer. Once they are frozen, they will obviously not leak, and a little bit of sticky doesn’t really bother me, I just don’t want it oozing out all over other things, so I keep any potential freezer messes contained by doing this.
I don’t mark my bags because they will not be here long enough to become a freezer mystery, however, if you have different kinds of apples, or you just prefer to label everything, mark the bags before you fill them with apples.
Once my apples froze, I transferred them all to my big deep freezer and I’m storing them upright like a shelf of books. Here is a video of the process:
