The Best Cracker Barrel Inspired Fried Apples

Are you a fan of the fried apples that you find on the Cracker Barrel menu? Learn how to make these at home. You will love them even more than the restaurant favorite.

One of my favorite things as a kid went I was eating at Cracker Barrel was that I had to select from a large list of sides. I would usually pick the Sugar Cured Ham for my main course and then among the sides, I always had to make room for the fried apples.

As an adult I learned early on how to make these myself. My version is packed with even more flavor that now when I have the Cracker Barrel ones I am often left disappointed.

Let me ruin the Cracker Barrel fried apples for you too!!!

Ingredients

• 4-6 apples cored & sliced, skin on
• 4 tbsp butter
• brown sugar to taste
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• ½ tsp freshly grated nutmeg

I know you want to know exactly how much brown sugar to use, but this really depends on what types of apples that you use. Are the apples sweet or tart, or in between? Are you using a juicy apple? This varieties a ton. I think it's best to cook your apples in butter and then when the apples are soft enough add in your brown sugar and taste.

If you want to really enhance the flavor of these fried apples, uses Kerrygold Irish Butter for the butter and Muscovado Sugar for the brown sugar.

What Apples are Best?

For me it come down to having an apple that provide two things:

• Ability to hold it's shape when cooked
• Has some tartness to it.

Here are some apples that you may find at the grocery store that will be good options:

• Granny Smith
• Honeycrisp
• Cosmic Crisp
• Pink Lady
• Braeburn

Any baking apple will be great for fried apples. Check out my list of 28 Common & Uncommon Apples to Bake With. You will find more apple suggestions including some harder to find apples that if you can find will work really great fried apples.

What I really love doing is using a pink or red flesh apple. Look how pretty the apples I made with Pink Pearl apples came out:

Here is how the apples look before you cut and cook them:

At the picture at the top of the post was made with another pink flesh apple - the Hidden Rose apple. These types of apples which include Lucy Glo and Lucy Rose are on the tart side which makes them great for this recipe as well. I highly suggest you seek out these kinds of apples to make the most prettiest fried apples on earth!

Optional Topping

One Thanksgiving I got some ginger snap cookies that I was going to crush up to use for an apple cobbler topping. But because of oven problems, I wasn't able to bake a whole cobbler in the oven because of time. So instead I just crushed up the ginger snap cookies along with melted butter and bake it in the oven for 10 minutes or so to brown it up.

Then I use my apples I was going to use for the cobbler to make fried apples. When they were all done I topped them with the ginger snap topping. That was simply amazing!!!!

To make the ginger snap topping:

• Combine 6 oz of crushed ginger snap cookies with 1 oz of melted butter.
• Spread onto a sheet pan and bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes until browned.
• Once cool enough, break apart and mix into your fried apples when they are finished.