Recipes · Sick-Day Food
Homemade Unsweetened Applesauce
Reader ratingsSweet apples cooked down with a splash of water and a cinnamon stick until they collapse into a soft, fragrant sauce with no sugar added. Mild, cool and easy to swallow, it is one gentle thing to eat among many, not a diet.
Safety
- Applesauce is food, not a treatment. The old bananas, rice, applesauce and toast (BRAT) diet is no longer advised for stomach bugs: US and European guidance is to return to your usual food as soon as you are hungry. With vomiting or diarrhea, sip an oral rehydration solution first (see the Oral Rehydration Solution recipe) and seek care for signs of dehydration (very dark urine or none for 8 hours, no wet diaper for 3 hours in a baby or toddler, no tears, sunken eyes, dizziness), blood in the stool or vomit, severe belly pain, a high fever, or symptoms that are not improving after a day or two.
- Apples contain fructose and sorbitol, which can loosen stools or cause gas in some people, especially toddlers and people with irritable bowel syndrome. Keep servings small (about 1/2 cup) if you have diarrhea. A half cup holds roughly 15 g of carbohydrate, so count it if you have diabetes.
- If you add cinnamon, buy it from a brand that tests for heavy metals: a 2023 to 2024 lead-exposure outbreak in US children was traced to cinnamon-containing applesauce pouches. Leave the cinnamon out for babies and toddlers.
- People with a birch pollen allergy often get an itchy mouth from raw apple, but cooked apple is usually tolerated. Stop eating it if you notice itching, hives or swelling.
Why it’s good for you
Cooked apples supply pectin, a soluble fiber, and natural sweetness with no added sugar, and in this form they are soft, cool and easy to eat when you can only manage a few spoonfuls.
Evidence
Limited evidence
Mostly small, early, or laboratory studies.
No trial has tested applesauce. Two double-blind trials of a branded pharmacy preparation of apple pectin and chamomile extract in children aged 6 months to 6 years with diarrhea, on top of standard rehydration and diet, found benefit (in 79 children, diarrhea had stopped by day 3 in 33 of 39 versus 23 of 40 on placebo; in 255 children, stool frequency fell more than on placebo), but that is a concentrated extract combined with chamomile, not cooked apple. US guidance from 2003 calls the bananas-rice-applesauce-toast diet unnecessarily restrictive and European guidelines say to continue regular feeding, and in 647 children with mild gastroenteritis, half-strength apple juice followed by preferred fluids led to fewer treatment failures than an electrolyte solution (16.7% vs 25.0%), though that was juice, not sauce, in mildly ill children.
General information from research and traditional use — not medical advice, and not a treatment for any condition. If you are pregnant, nursing, taking medication or managing a health condition, check with your clinician first, and seek care for symptoms that are severe or do not improve.
Ingredients
Instructions
- Peel, quarter and core the apples, then cut them into 1-inch chunks. Toss the chunks with the lemon juice in a bowl so they stay pale.
- Put the apples, water and cinnamon stick in a heavy medium pot with a lid and bring to a simmer over medium heat.
- Cover, lower the heat to medium-low, and cook for 15 to 20 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes, until the apples are completely soft and falling apart.
- Fish out the cinnamon stick. Mash the apples with a potato masher for a rustic sauce, or blend until smooth, stirring in warm water a tablespoon at a time if it is too thick.
- Taste it. Sweet apples should need nothing added. Serve warm or cool, in small portions, and refrigerate leftovers in a clean, covered container within 2 hours.
Tips
- Apple choice sets the sweetness. Soft, sweet apples such as Gala, Fuji and Golden Delicious cook down sweet enough on their own, while tart Granny Smith apples taste sharp. If the sauce is too tart, stir in a mashed ripe banana rather than sugar.
- Peeled apples make the smoothest sauce. When your stomach has settled, leave the skins on, wash the apples well and blend for a pink, higher-fiber sauce.
- It keeps 5 days in the refrigerator, or 3 months frozen in ice cube trays (about 2 tablespoons per cube), which is handy for a few spoonfuls at a time.
- Pair it with plain oatmeal, yogurt or toast when you can manage more. Applesauce on its own is not a complete meal.
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