Brown butter cinnamon apples with walnuts

/ Meg

Cinnamon apples

I don’t always have my stuff together.

As much as I’d love to be the sort of person who preps meals for the week on Sundays, moving deftly through the kitchen wielding a knife and storage containers, it just never seems to happen. I can’t blame being busy for this; I mean, we’re all busy. The truth? I just don’t make the time.

In an effort to attack our grotesque grocery bills, though, I’m trying to get better about meal planning — and limiting the number of dinners and lunches we eat out. I started keeping a budget sheet at the beginning of September just to get an idea of where our funds are going, and it’s definitely been enlightening.

Apples

Where am I going with all this? Using up. Consolidation. Waste not, want not. When Spence grabs the big bag of apples at the grocery store for $5, I look at them warily . . . because until recently, most of them went into the garbage. They’d go bad before we’d have a chance to eat them — and having to toss money (er, food) into the trash feels awful.

I noticed quite a few of the apples on our kitchen table were getting to the end of their shelf life yesterday . . . so I did what any budget-conscious lady would do: I hurried up and cooked them. With a little inspiration from the Food Network, I whipped up some pan-fried apples that tasted delicious and soothed my guilty conscious.

Spencer happily declared that they “taste like fall,” too, so there’s that.

You know I’m all about that.

This dish comes together quickly, uses ingredients you probably already have on hand and would be a great alternative to a more traditionally sugary dessert. The result is a warm, tasty side — but if you’re feeling bold, you could certainly add brown sugar or up the amount of walnuts. Despite all that butter in there, I was trying to err on the side of healthy.

You win some, you lose some.



Brown butter cinnamon apples with walnuts

Ingredients:
Six medium red apples, cored and diced
4 tbsp butter
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped
Pinch of salt

In a medium-sized skillet, add butter and cook over medium-high heat until melted. When the butter turns a golden brown (about 5 minutes), add apples, cinnamon and vanilla. Cook apples until softened but still firm, about 10 minutes, and add chopped walnuts. Cook together an additional 3-5 minutes until apples are fork tender. Serve immediately; refrigerate any leftovers. Serves 4.


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23 thoughts on “Brown butter cinnamon apples with walnuts”

  1. Looks good, I just showed this to my wife and she said she will make this dish and serve with vanilla custard. She also wants to start wasting less food now that our daughter has just gone to university. Perhaps we can now eat more healthily and save some money to contribute to her fees! 🙂

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  4. Oh my gosh this looks AMAZING! Going to have to try it! I’m pretty bad at preparing meals as well, so I’ve given myself a challenge to cook for myself for 30 days straight – no eating out at all, not even a coffee! I don’t know if it can be done, but I’m going to give it a try! My attempts can be found at http://daysdelicious.wordpress.com/ – though my photography isn’t as good as yours! x

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  12. Oh yum! I’m making these tonight, for sure. Apple desserts are the husband’s fave and we just got about half a dozen apples in our csa delivery Saturday! This looks so simple yet so delicious.

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