Less of your sauce: savoury recipe ideas for surplus apples | Kitchen Aide

<p>Bake them, spice them, make them into vinegar … our panel has a bunch of juicy ideas for your windfall of apples</p><p><strong>I always use </strong><strong>surplus apples in cakes and desserts, but what are my savoury options? <br></strong><em><strong>Emily, by email</strong></em><strong><br></strong>“We use heaps of apples, because we’re in the beating heart of apple country,” says Merlin Labron-Johnson, chef/owner of <a href="https://osiprestaurant.com/">Osip</a> and <a href="https://www.oldpharmacybruton.com/">The Old Pharmacy</a>, both in Bruton, Somerset. “People can’t give them away, so we’re constantly doing different things with them.” One keeper is apple ketchup, which, happily, just so happens to be a breeze to make. “You don’t even need to peel or core the apples,” Labron-Johnson says. “Bake them whole – we do this in hay, but obviously people don’t necessarily have that to hand – and you get this really savoury, nutty flavour.” Blend the cooked apples, then pass through a sieve and add some sugar and vinegar. That’s good dolloped on the side of sausages, and it keeps and freezes well, too.</p><p>Mark Diacono, author of <a href="https://guardianbookshop.com/abundance-9781837830565/">Abundance</a>, says Emily should consider going down two main savoury routes: “One is to use apples almost like a mild spice – something that you wouldn’t necessarily pick up is there, but you’d miss it if it wasn’t.” Take celeriac and apple soup as an example: “I love celeriac a great deal, but if you’re not careful, it can make a soup that would hold wallpaper to the vertical.” Introduce some apple to the mix, however, and the fruit will change the texture of the celeriac, and also soften its bitterness: “It just lets a bit of air out of its tyres. You wouldn’t perhaps say, ‘That’s celeriac and apple soup’