You’re saying:
“Chuck, I don’t need a recipe for applesauce. I just throw a bunch of apples into the mouth of an angry dog and let him chew them up and spit them out into a Tupperware bowl and then I dig in with my favorite Spongebob spoon why do you try to force recipes on us, you recipe fascist.”
And sure, you’re right. You could just let an angry dog chew your raw apples into sauce.
But I’m a guy who doesn’t like easy answers. I’m a guy who sees a grizzly bear and who decides to ride it. A guy who goes to the moon and asks, “Why aren’t we going to Mars?” Who eats chocolate and says “WHY CAN’T I EAT ALL THE CHOCOLATE RIGHT NOW?” and then proceeds to eat all the chocolate right now. On the back of a grizzly. On the moon.
So, I’m going to give you a recipe for applesauce.
And you will never make applesauce any other way ever again because if you try, angry praying mantids will eat your fingertips off. It’s true. I’ve seen this shit happen.
Okay, here’s the recipe. Are you ready?
Take seven grapefruits.
Yeah, no, okay, you were right to pause there. This recipe doesn’t feature any fucking grapefruits. You caught me. You were tested and you passed, if only by the skin of your delicate pink genitals. This recipe contains zero grapefruit because that means this applesauce would make your mouth pucker like an ugly butthole. Good. Now we can move to the real recipe.
Take a bunch of apples.
I’m gonna say 6-8 apples, but really, this recipe works regardless of how many apples you choose to use. That’s on you. This decision is in your hands.
Now you ask: “What varietal of apple am I using?”
Again, I don’t much care, but choose two from the following list:
Red Randy, Pink Gingy, McReedy, Jumbaloo, Mojo, Slim Shady, Freya, Honeyshine, Fapplecrisp, Spangdiddler, Obvious Dolly, Yellow Mediocre, Gorgon, Franka Potente, Monkeyplum, Reynolds Black, Tito Dubious, Wormseed, Cratchett, Blue Fenmoore, or Steve.
BOOM you failed that test. None of those are real apples. Not a one of them. Those are all nicknames for penises and vaginas and you didn’t even know that. Those aren’t apples. Why did you think those were apples? Did you think only like, special fancy fucking farmers markets have these? That’s not true at all. See? You just don’t know things. This is why you need me. You need me to trick you out of your own ignorance.
Whatever. I like to put two different types of apple into my sauce.
I use one sweet, and one tart apple variety.
Mostly sweet.
Sweet, I like Jonathan, Honeycrisp, Pink Lady, Fuji, Gala.
Then I add in one or two tart apples. Granny Smith, maybe.
Or, if you don’t want to mix: there exists a new apple out there I’d not seen before (so, new to me, maybe) called Sweetango? It’s the bomb. Literally. It’s an apple bomb THE TERRORISTS HAVE WON okay no it’s just metaphorically the bomb. It is both sweet and tart and makes for a nice all-around apple, including existing as an apple that deserves to go inside your applesauce.
Skin these apples as you would flay those who would insult your hair or your shoes.
Cut up these apples into coarse hunks, chunks, bricks and boulders.
Set your HELLBOX (aka, oven) to 350 degrees.
Place all your apple chunks on foil atop a cookie sheet.
Dust these apples with:
A freckling of nutmeg.
A dusting of cinnamon.
A crumbling of brown sugar.
A speckling of vanilla bean.
An alternative to the brown sugar + vanilla bean is to make your very own vanilla sugar, which means shoving a vanilla bean hull into a container of sugar and standing there and staring at it in judgment for seven days whereupon the sugar will absorb the vanilla essence — AKA the vanilla’s soul — and then the sugar tastes both like motherfucking sugar and like motherfucking vanilla at the same time. Which is basically magic, we can all just admit that.
If you do that, sprinkle your vanilla sugar atop the apple chunks.
(“Apple Chunks” was my nickname in the Marines, by the way.)
(THE SPACE MARINES.)
Now, take those apples, and shove them in the oven for 15-20 minutes.
They are done when you spear them with a fork and the fork finds no resistance — it’s like stabbing a cloud with an ice pick because fuck clouds that’s why, fuck them for raining on our wedding day like Alanis warned us all about whatever shut up.
Take the apples out of the oven. Their punishment is complete.
By the way, your house at this point should smell pretty much the best it’s ever smelled. So good it’ll cover up that wet dog + toddler pee + dead body + ennui smell you got going on. It’ll smell like Thanksgiving and Christmas had a baby in your kitchen. And not in that fake-ass shitty way like you find at some stores around this time of the year (seriously, you walk into a crafts store in October it’s like someone punches you in the sinuses with a fist made of chemical potpourri and yeah, that’s right, I go to craft stores because this motherfucker right here likes using wicker and yarn to make his various effigies, go on, make fun of me, see who gets an effigy made of them and burned on my front lawn in a Satanic rite, huh).
Anyway, when I said that the punishment of the apples was complete, obviously I was lying because now you take those apple chunks and you pick up the foil beneath them and slide them into a blender. Or into a pot where you will use an immersion blender (or just use your forehead or your feet, I seriously don’t care, I’m not eating your applesauce, I already made my own).
Then, you will squirt onto them some fresh-squozen lemon juice.
A quarter-to-a-half of a lemon will do. Watch the lemon seeds because those slippery little dicks will try to get into everything. It’s like they want to you to choke on them.
You will also add a half-cup of apple cider. Not apple juice because what are you, a loser? Cider. I said cider. Not cider vinegar because uhhh, ew. Why are you trying to fuck around this late in the game? Are you trying to ruin things? YOU ALWAYS RUIN THINGS.
Anyway.
We are at the point where you could also add other things.
You could add:
a) A dollop of good honey.
b) Another fruit or fruit juice of your choosing.
c) A splash of rum.
d) A pipette (or seven) of bourbon.
Yes, I am advocating boozy applesauce, WHAT OF IT?
All of it is in the blender, yes?
You will now blend them into a desirable consistency.
You like ’em chunky? Leave ’em chunky.
You like ’em aerated into puffy light hillocks of apple foam? THEN DO THAT.
Now it’s done. You can eat it warm or you can send it to the frozen gulag that is your refrigerator for it to develop added flavor overnight.
Then, in the morning, BATHE IN IT.
I mean, EAT IT, I totally didn’t say “bathe.”
The end.
…
Okay, now it’s your turn. This is a recipe exchange whether you knew that or not. Head to the comments, drop a recipe or a link to a recipe or I will find your favorite person in the whole wide world and I will eat them. These are my terms.
ritaplushvamp says:
Binge-Worthy Black Bean Salsa
This salsa is guaranteed to make your naughty-bits tingle, unless you don’t like cilantro. In which case you should stop reading this and remove yourself from the planet for good. I’m not kidding. Get out. There’s no room in this world for cilantro haters. (If you’re not familiar with it, cilantro is parsley’s spicy, more interesting cousin.)
Now that we’ve gotten that bit of ugliness out of the way, I will continue with the recipe. Here’s what you’ll need:
15oz can of drained black beans (No, you can’t substitute pinto beans, kidney beans, refried beans, or whatever other canned beans gathering dust in your pantry for the past decade. Just black beans.)
1.5 cups of corn. (Frozen, canned, fresh. I really don’t care what you use—just get some corn, OK?) If you use canned or frozen, drain the excess liquid.
1 cup finely chopped red pepper (This exercise will make your eyes gush with pools of hot, stingy tears, but I promise, it’s worth the pain. Feel free to assign this task to your least favorite child, relative, or frenemy.)
1 cup finely chopped red pepper.
1 cup finely chopped green pepper. (Technically, you could just use one type of pepper—they basically taste the same. But the two peppers will make a magical rainbow of color your guests will wet themselves over.)
1 TBS cilantro. (If you don’t like cilantro and have gotten this far into the recipe, I have to ask WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?)
One half cup sour cream.
One quarter cup mayonnaise.
2 TBS red wine vinegar.
1 tsp ground cumin.
1 tsp chili powder.
One half tsp salt.
One quarter tsp garlic powder.
Pepper to taste.
Combine first 6 ingredients in a large bowl. (Watch as the colors majestically erupt.)
Whisk together sour cream, mayonnaise, vinegar, and seasonings. (This should look something like a cinnamon-spiced latte—heavy on the milk.) Pour over bean mixture.
Toss gently to coat and then chill in fridge. Serve with tortilla chips. Listen to the yummy sounds your guests make in between the crunching as they gleefully ingest mouthfuls of this delightful concoction. (Unless of course, they’re cilantro haters. In which case, I recommend forceful evacuation of said hater from your domicile, lest they infect your other guests with their blasphemy.)
October 30, 2013 — 12:45 PM
Bonnie Johnston says:
Chuck, just wanted to share one of my favorite recipes with you:
Grandma’s Home-Made Sucralose
(Reprinted from “Better Meals Through Chemistry” by Alton McGuiness,Jr.)
“The most indispensable ingredient of all good home cooking – love, for those you are cooking for.” – Sophia Loren
If you love the great taste of Splenda (“Made from sugar,so it tastes like sugar”), you’re a fan of sucralose — known affectionately to gourmets around the world as 4,1′,6′-trichloro-4,1′,6′-trideoxygal actosucrose.
If you are a die-hard traditionalist or do-it-yourselfer, you may have thought about whipping up a batch in your kitchen, just like grandma used to do. Here’s your chance.
This recipe has been handed down for generations, starting with U.S.patent 4,362,869 which was filed on December 4th, 1980, just in time for holiday baking. At least a dozen more patents have come along since then, but most people use the original method, which is fine as long as you’re not too worried about impurities or residual hydrochloric acid.
Sucralose can be used as a substitute for sugar, but in lesser amounts since the same “magic trick” that is used to make pesticides more potent — chlorination — is used here to make the sugar more potent. So you use less! And since your body can’t use sucralose the way it uses sugar, ninety percent of the sucralose you eat comes back out again.They hope to find out where that other ten percent goes someday in thefuture, but sucralose is something you can enjoy today!
Ingredients
2 cups white sugar
1 quart water
2 quarts pyridine
4 cups acetic anhydride
1 cup thionyl chloride
1 cup sulphuryl chloride
4 cups dimethylformamide
A pinch of Splenda-brand sucralose
2 ion exchange columns
Cheesecloth
Large mixing bowl (not plastic)
Ice cream maker (at least 1-1/2 quart capacity; hand-crank or electric)
Rock salt
Ice
Notes on Ingredients
Pyridine is a toxic colorless flammable liquid with a disagreeable,putrid fish-like odor, and is usually derived from coal tar, although if you are out of coal you can whip up a batch using acetaldehyde, formaldehyde and ammonia.
Acetic anhydride is the chemical compound with the formula (CH3CO)2O and is used in lots of recipes, like the one that you use to refine opium into heroin.
Thionyl chloride is listed as a “Schedule 3” compound under the Chemical Weapons Convention Act, along with phosgene gas and cyanide, so be sure that you start on the paperwork at least six months before you need it.
Sulfuryl chloride is a colorless liquid with a thick pungent odor so be sure to leave the windows open, especially since it can explode on contact with water. Since sulfuryl chloride is not found in nature, it can be pricey but when it comes to attaching chlorine atoms to sugar, pesticides, etc. there is just no substitute.
Dimethylformamide has been linked to cancer and birth defects in humans and penetrates most plastics, so be sure to use a glass or metal mixing bowl.
Steps
1. Be sure to use all of the necessary safety precautions that grandma taught you in chemistry lab.
2. Slowly add the acetic anhydride to the pyridine. When it is dissolved, pour half of it into the ice cream maker, reserving the other half for later.
Pack the ice cream maker bucket with ice and rock salt to bring the temperature of the pyridine-acetic anhydride solution to around four degrees below zero Fahrenheit.
Be sure to never use the ice cream maker for anything else ever again.
3. Add the sugar and crank the ice cream maker for about four hours. If you are using a hand-crank ice cream maker, you will probably want to get family members or neighborhood kids to take turns — when they hear that their reward will be cookies made with chlorinated table sugar, they’ll be eager to help!
4. After four hours, most of the sucrose will now be sucrose-6-acetate, which sounds tasty, but the overpowering toxic fishy scent of the pyridine will help remind you not to sample the goods until we’re finished.
Separate out the sucrose-6-acetate using the ion exchange column; if you don’t have an ion exchange column, try whisking in the whites of six eggs and a pinch of baking powder, then strain through two layers of cheesecloth. Note that this latter method will not work.
5. Now, we’ll make some fresh “Vilsmeier reagent.” Pour the thionylchloride into a mixing bowl and add the dimethylformamide. Put some plastic wrap over the bowl and put it in the freezer for four hours, until a white precipitate forms.
Take it out of the freezer and pour into the ice cream maker. Resist the urge to lick the bowl! As if your life depended on it, which it does.
6. Mix the sucralose-6-acetate with the Vilsmeier reagent, and add the remaining pyridine-acetic anhydride solution plus a quart of water, and whisk for as long as you can stand the fumes. This is the magic step that adds the chlorine to the sugar to give sucralose its distinctive chemical structure and make it superdy-duperdy sweet.
7. Add one quart of water and cook over low heat to drive off the pyridine and other stuff. Run the resulting solution over another ion exchange column. I’m pretty sure that’s the next step, I was having trouble thinking straight when Grandma showed me this because of all the fumes. I think it was my Grandma, anyway.
8. The liquid you have left should have about 1 cup of sucralose and 1 cup other stuff that came pretty close to being sucralose, but no cigar.
Put this in the freezer and add the pinch of sucralose. This will cause the sucralose in the liquid to crystallize and come out of the solution and mostly leave everything else behind.
It’s weird that you need sucralose to make sucralose, isn’t it? Maybe it’s just the dimethylformamide talking, but how the heck did they make it the first time?
9. Strain through a cheesecloth. Voila, a chlorine-enriched,zero-calorie sweetener just like Grandma used to make!
10. Sucralose is an amazing 600 times sweeter than sugar, so mix the 1 cup of sucralose with 599 cups of suitable “filler material” (sawdust,baby laxative, etc.) and use just like sugar.
Now go make those cookies!
November 4, 2013 — 4:34 PM
Cassie Clemans says:
This applesauce is the bomb. That’s all.
November 4, 2013 — 5:50 PM
carlee says:
Best recipe I’ve ever read. Please make a cookbook!
November 8, 2013 — 4:49 PM