Apple Pie Filling

I find making the filling on the stove top more reliable than just baking in the pie.

Ingredients

• 5 Granny Smith apples
• 5 Macintosh apples
• 2 tsp apple cider vinegar
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/3 cup white granulated sugar
• heaping 1/4 cup flour
• 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp cardamom

Directions

• Put apple cider vinegar into large pot
• Peel and core apples. Instead of actually coring the apples, I just cut the core out as a rectangle.
• Slice apples to ~1/4 in.
• Add apples to pot as they get sliced. Mix them a bit so that the vinegar can help keep them from browning. However, both Granny Smith and Macintosh apples are on the tart side, so they probably won’t brown anyway.
• Add sugars, flour, and spices to pot.
• Mix everything together a bit. If the pot is overfull, then just mix once the apples start to break down and take up less space.
• Put pot on stove on low or medium low and cover pot.
• Mix every 3 to 5 minutes until the apples are as soft as you’d like for the pie. Takes 15 to 20 minutes for me.

The filling does fine being baked another hour in a pie, or it can be used as-is in, e.g., a pre-baked crust. If you aren’t adding something with some fat in it (e.g., a crumb topping, a pie crust, or ice cream), you might want to melt some butter into the crust.