Are apples sustainable? Apple production is relatively sustainable. There is no significant damage to air, water, land, soil, etc. (As long as pesticides have not been used.) apples are one of the most eco-friendly fruits along side oranges.
How they are grown: Apples seem like the simplest thing to grow right? Truth is, each apple has its own genetically unique seed. This means that each seed is capable of growing a completely different apple from the one it came from. This can be a major conflict for farmers. In order to avoid this problem, farmers use a cool technique borrowed from the ancient Greeks called “grafting”. Grafting is the process of uniting two plants into a single plant to use desirable characteristics of each one. Grafting gives you the ability to replicate a good tree that you have had in the past AND it helps produce better crops that are more resistant to the problems that their ancestors faced! In order for the flowers to turn into fruit they have to be crossed pollinated. This means the pollen from one flower has to be mixed with pollen for a different variety of apple. You can guess who’s in charge of that. Yup! Bees! They have to be able to cross pollenate thousands of apple trees in as little as 7 days and somehow they do it. Pretty cool right?!
History of apples: Today, the US is the second largest producer of apples in the world. After the banana, the apple is the nations most popular fruit. Before Europeans brought their apples to America, only sour crab apples grew here. By the mid 1600’s there were about 60 varieties of apples. One of the reasons why we have so many apples today is due to a man named John Chapman aka Johnny Appleseed. In the first half of the 1800’s John traveled to Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana sharing about god and giving out apple seeds. Because of him, by 1905 there were about 14,000 recorded types of apples in North America. Nowadays, there is only about 90 varieties of commercially sold apples. The reason for this is because comercial orchards began focusing on growing fewer varieties more efficiently. Later on, large commercial orchards forced many small orchards out of business. When the famous mass market apples Red delicious and the golden delicious apples took hold in the 1920’s many other varieties were just no longer sold.
A Classic Apple Pie!
Ingredients: The Crust
3 cups of all purpose flour
1 cup butter cut into 1/2” pieces
2 tbsp granulated sugar
1/2 tbsp kosher salt
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
8 tbsp iced water (or more if needed)
Ingredients: Filling
3 1/2 lb. assorted apples. Cored, peeled, and thinly sliced
2 tbsp. Freshly squeezed lemon juice
2/3 cups of granulated sugar
2 tbsp. All purpose flour, plus more for rolling
1tsp. Ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. Pure vanilla extract
1/4 tsp. Kosher salt
2 tbsp butter, cut into small pieces
1 egg beaten with 1 tbsp. Water (egg wash)
coarse sugar fro sprinkling
Directions:
Crust: place flour and butter into freezer for 30 minutes before starting crust process
2. In a large food processor, pulse flour, sugar and salt until combined. Add butter and pulse until pea-sized and some slightly larger pieces form. With the machine running, add vinegar, then ice water into feed tube,1 tablespoon at a time, until dough starts to come together and is moist but not too wet and sticky (test by squeezing some with your fingers). Mixture will be crumbly.
3. Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface, form into 2 equal size balls, and flatten into disks ( making sure there are no/minimal cracks).
4.cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until dough is very cold. At least two hours or up to overnight.
5. On a lightly floured surface, roll out one disc of dough into a 12” circle, Drape over pie dish and gently press to fit (don’t stretch) refrigerate 30 minutes or freeze 10 minutes.
Make filling:
1. In a large bowl toss apple slices with lemon juice, sugar, flour, cinnamon, vanilla and salt until well combined. transfer apple mixture into the crust lined pie dish. Dot all over with butter.
assemble & bake pie
1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees with a large baking sheet on the middle of the rack and lightly grease a 9”-x-1.5” pie dish with cooking spray.
2. Roll out second disc of dough into a 12” circle and draped over apple filling, trim edges to 1”, tuck overhang up and over itself, and crimp edges.
3. Brush with egg wash and make six 2” slots in the center. Sprinkle coarse sugar.
4. Place pie into preheated baking sheet and bake 20 minutes, then reduce heat to 375 degrees and bake until golden and bubbly, 40 minutes more. (If edges begin to look dark, cover with foil)
5. Let cool on a wire rack at least 2 hours before serving.
And there it is ! A delicious homemade apple pie!