Freezing Them Apples

 We went apple picking two weekends ago and came home with a TON of apples. We had so much fun and we got a lot of bang for our buck. For $20 we got a great family experience and a bushel of apples. The boys started eating them before I could weigh them to try and compare the orchard price to the store price, but I think I paid less per pound than the store.

After not having time for the last few weeks, tonight I was able to freeze some of them. As some of you know, when you freeze apples they turn a brown color. So, I figured I'd do a Pinterest (which I love) search to find out what method to use to freeze them so they don't turn brown.

Well, as you can imagine pages and pages of pins came up. So, I read a few and found that the two most common methods were soaking the apples in cold water with either lemon juice or salt. All the pages I read claimed each way was the best way. Being me I decided to try both.

While getting the apples peeled Little Bean helped by biting into as many of the apples as possible. At one point he was double fisting two apples; taking a bite out of one and then the other. He managed to get his teeth into at least 10 of the apples. Most of them were only a bite, so, they still made it into the bags. but this little apple was a bit to devoured to cut up into slices.

Lemon Juice Method:

I filled the bowl with cold water and added 4 squirts of lemon juice. Then I cut up and added the apples. The posts I read said to rinse the apples, but didn't say if the apples should towel dried to remove some of the excess water. Since I didn't know which would be better, to pat them dry or put them in wet, I did both.

Salt Method:

I put enough salt to lightly cover the bottom of the bowl and then added cold water. I swirled the water with my hand to get the salt fully dissolved. Then I added the apples and completely submerged them. Now just like with the lemon juice method, none of the posts I found talked about drying the apples. So, again, I did two bags; 1-pat dried and 1- wet.

I know I seem pre-occupied with towel drying the apples but I've seen apples frozen before and they tend to give off a lot of liquid. I'm hoping that it's not a problem but wanted to try both to see which way works better.


I labeled each of the bags with the date and which soaking they were and if they were dried or not. Then I popped them into the freezer. I'll give updates on how they are faring in the freezer and then if the soaking affects the taste once I cook with them.