Southern Fried Apples

These sweet Southern Fried Apples are tender, buttery, and warmly spiced with cinnamon. Serve them as a country-style side dish, spooned over ice cream, or piled onto hot biscuits or pancakes.

Course Breakfast, Dessert, Side Dish

Cuisine American, Southern

Keyword fried-apple-recipes, southern-fried-apples

Prep Time 15

Cook Time 20

Total Time 35

Servings cups

Calories 446kcal

Ingredients

4 Tbsp salted butter
8 large Granny Smith apples peeled, cored and sliced into wedges
1/4-1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/4-1/3 cup light brown sugar
1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp apple pie spice
pinch of salt
1-2 Tbsp cornstarch plus additional as needed
cold water or apple juice

Instructions

Peel the apples and remove the core, then slice.
In a heavy bottomed skillet, melt butter over medium-high heat.
Add apples, granulated sugar, brown sugar, lemon juice, cinnamon, apple pie spice and salt. Stir with the sugar mixture to combine.
Lower heat to low. Simmer allowing to bubble gently uncovered for 15-20 minutes or until they have a tender texture.
In a small bowl, stir together 1 Tbsp of cornstarch in just enough cold water (or apple juice) to dissolve.
Increase the heat to medium high then stir the cornstarch slurry into the apple slices. Repeat until your desired thickness and consistency is reached.
Serve immediately as a side dish with pork or chicken or serve over pancakes, waffles, homemade biscuits or pound cake.

Notes

Apples - You can make fried apples with any variety of apples that you have on hand. It's important to choose a firm apple that's somewhat tart like Granny Smith apples. You can adapt this recipe using Gala apples, Honeycrisp apples or Braeburn apples. Keep in mind that each variety of apple will cook slightly different. Some are naturally more juicy than others and some will need less cooking time.
Use Slice Apple or Cubed Apple - I choose to use sliced apples for this recipe. You could also chop the apples into bite-size cubes, but not too small or they'll just turn to mush. Think large apple cubes allowing for the fact that they will naturally shrink while cooking.
Adjust the Sweetness to Taste - Should you choose to make with a sweeter, softer apple such as golden delicious you will need to adjust the amount of sugar accordingly ands they will need less time to cook.
Cornstarch Thickens the Sauce - You can thicken the sauce with cornstarch at the end of cooking to your personal taste. Start with one tablespoon of cornstarch dissolved in cold water (or cold apple juice) then repeat the process until your desired thickness is reached. If you'd like a thicker coating, repeat. Likewise, If you want a thinner syrup, you may choose not to thicken the apples at all.
Spices - You can adjust the amount of cinnamon to your taste or use all cinnamon in place of the apple pie spice. You could use dark brown sugar in place of light brown sugar.

Nutrition