Instant Pot Applesauce
Instant Pot applesauce is one of those foods that sounds too simple to be delicious, but you somehow can't stop your spoon from dipping into the batch! This freezer-friendly recipe will have you putting up your apple orchard haul in no time.
🔍 Recipe At-A-Glance: Instant Pot Applesauce
- ⏰ Prep Time: 25 minutes
- 🕰️ Cook Time: 5 minutes
- 🍎 Flavor Profile: Pure apples straight out of the orchard, with just a touch of cinnamon.
- 🫙 Texture: Smooth or chunky-cook's choice.
- 🍏 Good For: After-school snacks, baking (like in applesauce banana bread), side dishes, smoothies (like my apple and greens smoothie). Heck, we even use it in cinnamon ornaments and homemade dog biscuits!
- 🧡 Difficulty: Simple as can be!
"I love cooking the apples with the skin on. You get so much more flavor."
- NANCY -
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🧡 Why You'll Love This Recipe
We hit up the apple orchard right up the road from us every fall to stock up on apples. And while storing apples is fairly straightforward, applesauce takes up far less storage space.
Here's why you'll love this recipe:
- No Babysitter Required: Unlike other applesauce recipes, there's no babysitting a pot to make sure the sauce doesn't stick. Instant Pot applesauce is mostly hands-off!
- Take Control: Make this applesauce as smooth or as chunky as you'd like! (Though for the smoothest, most velvety apple spread, you might want to try homemade apple butter.)
- Freezer-Friendly: Though canning applesauce is easy-peasy lemon-squeezy, we know it can be time consuming. This applesauce cooks in just minutes, and then can be popped into the freezer-no water bath canning required.
🍎 The Ingredients You Need
- Apples: We like to use a mix of tart and sweet apples for the best, purest apple flavor. When you're picking apples at the orchard, just remember: tart varieties store best. Less sugar = less of a chance to go bad!
- Lemon Juice: This is technically optional, but we like the bright flavor it adds to the applesauce. Plus, it helps keep the sauce from browning, leaving the applesauce with that pretty rosy-pink color.
- Salt: Salt may seem like a weird addition to applesauce, but it really just helps bring out the flavor of the apples. While you don't have to use it, you'll get a tastier applesauce if you do!
Make sure to check the recipe card below for the full ingredients list, along with quantities and my expert tips and tricks.
🔁 Variations & Substitutions
- Ditch the peels: We like to keep the peels on our apples. We've made many a batch of applesauce over the years, and find that the peels add only a tiny bit of texture (and contribute that pink color in the photos!). But if you want the absolute smoothest of smooth applesauce, peel the fruit before cooking.
- Make it chunky: We love a chunky applesauce (see also: our chunky cranberry applesauce). To achieve that texture, use the immersion blender just long enough to break up the biggest pieces of apple and voilà: chunky applesauce.
🥣 How to Make Instant Pot Applesauce
Step 1: Toss everything in the Instant Pot-cored apples, lemon juice, cinnamon, salt, and a bit of water. Turn to Manual, High Pressure for 5 minutes.
Step 2: Let the pressure naturally release. If you try to speed things up and manually release the pressure, you're bound to end up with a hot applesauce volcano. Save yourself the mess (and the burns) and let it release naturally. Once it has, use an immersion blender to whir up the sauce to your preferred texture.
Step 3: Allow the applesauce to cool a bit before moving it to the fridge or freezer-safe containers. Don't forget to label those freezer containers!
🙋🏻♀️ Instant Pot Applesauce FAQs
Absolutely you can-it's our preferred way to make applesauce! Leaving the skins on has a minimal effect on the applesauce texture, and saves you so much prep time.
It isn't absolutely necessary, but it will preserve the color and brighten up the flavor of the applesauce if you do!
Applesauce can be kept in the refrigerator for up to 10 days, or frozen for up to six months. Don't forget to label your bags-nobody wants to find mystery foods in their freezer in the middle of January!
👩🏻🍳 My Expert Tips & Tricks
- Fresh is best: If you're headed to the orchard, plan to make applesauce within the next few days for the absolute best sauce!
- Trust the process: It may look like you haven't added enough water to your Instant Pot. But I promise, as soon as it starts to build up pressure, the apples will release a ton of juices, and there will be plenty of liquid in the Instant Pot.
- The many adventures of applesauce: Don't fall into the trap of thinking applesauce is only for eating. It is great for baked goods, like applesauce zucchini bread, and smoothies (helloooooo, apple spinach smoothie). We even love it for making cinnamon ornaments and homemade dog biscuits!
- Can you freeze applesauce? Yes you can!: Applesauce freezes beautifully! Make lots and stash it in your freezer for yummy snacks all year long.
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📖 Recipe
Instant Pot Applesauce
Ingredients
- 2 pounds tart green apples like Granny Smith, cored and chopped into large chunks (about 8 medium-size apples)
- 2 pounds sweet apples like Gala or Fuji, cored and chopped into large chunks (about 8 medium-size apples)
- Juice of 1 lemon about 2 tablespoons worth
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon optional
- Pinch of salt
- ¼ cup water
Instructions
- Put all ingredients in the basin of your Instant Pot. Close lid, turn knob to sealing, and set to Manual, High Pressure for 5 minutes.
- When pressure cooking time is up, allow the Instant Pot to naturally release pressure. Because the applesauce is so liquidy, you don't want to manually release the pressure or you might make an applesauce volcano!
- When pressure has naturally released, remove the lid, and using an immersion blender, blend up the applesauce until it's your desired texture. I like it a bit chunky!
- Store applesauce in a covered container in the fridge for up to 10 days. Or, freeze in freezer-safe jars or zip-top bags for up to six months.
Video
Notes
- You may be concerned that ¼ cup of water is not enough liquid to properly operate the Instant Pot. No worries- the second the apples begin to heat, they release juice. The Instant Pot will have plenty of liquid by the time it is up to pressure.
- If you prefer a perfectly smooth applesauce, you can go ahead and peel your apples. For me, it's only about 5% smoother for an extra hour of work-not worth it! Plus, a little added fiber never hurt.
- By using half sweet and half tart apples, I really don't find the need to add any sweetener to the batch. If you have some particularly tart apples, feel free to add honey or maple syrup to taste right before you blend the applesauce at the end.
- If you don't want your applesauce to taste like last night's dinner, I highly recommend investing in an extra set of sealing rings for your Instant Pot. I like this color-coded set. I use the red for sweet and the blue for savory.
When we've gotten a little overenthusiastic at the apple orchard, this applesauce makes it so easy to deal with some of the overflow!
Can you water bath can this?
Hi Micah! This recipe hasn't been tested for canning so we don't recommend following it for that purpose. If you're looking for a homemade applesauce to can, you can find our tested and approved recipe for water bath canning here: https://wholefully.com/canning-homemade-applesauce-recipe/
Hello! Have you canned this applesauce?
I haven't!
I love cooking the apples with the skin on. You get so much more flavor. I use a chinois to make mine smooth and keep skins and seeds out of the applesauce.