All About Apples: Which are Best for Your Recipe? (November 2025)

Tim Long, UC Master Food Preserver Online Program Volunteer

Red Delicious apples at the market (Photo caption: Tim Long, used with permission). 

If you’re looking for a native apple tree, you’ll to be disappointed. Apples, other than three varieties of crabapples, aren’t native to the Americas. They originated in Kazakhstan in central Asia and eastern Europe about 6,500 years ago.

Apples came to America with the first colonists, who carried young trees and seeds from home. Unlike today’s apples, they were likely smaller and not so pleasant tasting. Even so, apples became a staple in the American diet with many being pressed to make cider. Hard cider was regularly consumed at meals—a safer alternative at a time when water supplies often carried disease due to poor sanitary practices.

Apples moved westward along with settlers, including the man many know as Johnny Appleseed. He was born Jonathan Chapman in 1774 in Leominster, Massachusetts, and apprenticed as an apple orchardist. Chapman collected seeds from cider presses, planting (and selling!) orchards as he traveled west.

Over 2,500 Varieties of Apples are Grown in the United States

Although the crabapple is the only variety native to North America, thousands of varieties of apples are grown in the United States. Red Delicious, Fuji, Golden Delicious, Braeburn, McIntosh, Rome, Granny Smith, and Gala are a few of the most popular varieties grown in the U.S.

Fun facts and useful information:

• The old saying, "An apple a day keeps the doctor away," comes from an old English adage, "To eat an apple before going to bed, will make the doctor beg his bread."

• A bushel of apples weighs about 42 pounds and will yield 20-24 quarts of apple sauce.
• Two pounds of apples make one 9-inch pie.
• It takes about 36 apples to create one gallon of apple cider.

• Don't peel your apple (but do wash it). Two-thirds of the fiber and lots of antioxidants are found in the peel.
• Red Delicious is the most widely grown apple variety in the United States.

• The five most popular apples in the United States are Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Gala, Fuji, and Granny Smith.  

Different apple varieties are best suited for particular applications:

Table provided by University of Illinois-Illinois Extension Food Preservation:
https://extension.illinois.edu/food-preservation/apples

Special Note on Acidity of Apples from: Ball Blue Book FAQs

“Why was lemon juice added to apple recipes in the Ball® Blue Book 38th edition?”

Over the past several years, recipe validation efforts with apples have noticed the pH increasing of certain species. The Ball^® Home Canning Test Kitchen ran a screening study of a variety of species of apples under several conditions and found that some species have pH's higher than historical assumptions. We are unaware of any documented safety issues arising from current apple recipes, and the National Center for Home Food Preservation has not updated their guidance on apples requiring any acidification. Out of an abundance of caution and in the spirit of continuous improvement, we have added bottled lemon juice to all apple-based recipes where the apple was expected to be the lowest pH ingredient. The quantity of lemon juice was based on experimentation of different types of apple recipes using the highest pH apple species that was identified, and using pH modeling to understand the margin at different pH and temperature thresholds keeping existing processing time recommendations the same. These apple acidification guidelines have been incorporated into all Ball^® home canning recipe publications for print year 2024. We are not currently recommending that consumers discard any apple recipes they have canned previously as prior publications are still within USDA recommendations. We are advising consumers using Ball^® recipes to follow the acidification guidelines in publications starting in 2024. We believe this is a best practice given the current information, and we will reevaluate as additional data becomes available.”

See https://help.ballmasonjars.com/s/article/Why-was-lemon-juice-added-to-apple-recipes-in-the-Ball-Blue-Book-38th-edition

Great resources for apple/apple related preservation are: 

The Ball^® Blue Book, https://www.ballmasonjars.com/products/products-to-get-you-started/ball%C2%AE-blue-book-guide-to-preserving/ and the Ball^® website (https://www.ballmasonjars.com/recipes?fdid=recipes)

Selecting, Preparing, and Canning Fruit and Fruit Products, The National Center for Home Food Preservation  (https://nchfp.uga.edu/papers/guide/GUIDE02_HomeCan_rev0715.pdf)

So Easy to Preserve, Cooperative Extension, The University of Georgia.  https://www.fcs.uga.edu/extension/so-easy-to-preserve

UCANR Master Food Preservers: https://ucanr.edu/program/uc-master-food-preserver-program/uc-master-food-preservers-recipes