Home Canning Peach Pieces
by Rachel Tayse • August 11, 2011 • Preserving • 16 Comments
As much as I love canning, I get a little bored with doing the same old things. Faced with 43 pounds of peaches to process, I decided to try something new: canning peach pieces.
There are many methods to can peach pieces, including cold and hot pack, with syrup, juice, or water. I sought out the advice of the Ball Canning Book, the National Center for Home Food Preservation and PickYourOwn.org. The combined wisdom suggests that hot packing in at least a very light syrup does the best job of preserving the texture of the peaches.
My Method
1) Blanche peaches in boiling water and shock in ice water to loosen skins.
2) Remove skins.
3) Slice peach in half, remove pit (get a freestone variety or this is nearly impossible), and slice each half into six slices.
4) Place the slices in a large pot. Any pieces that do not hold together for nicely formed slices go in a smaller pot for making into peach jam.
5) Make a very light syrup of 1 cup sugar to 8 cups water by gently heating to dissolve the sugar into the water.
6) Pour syrup over peaches and heat to a gentle boil. Hold at boiling for 5 minutes.
7) Ladle peach pieces into sterilized pint jars. Use a knife to gently stir and release air bubbles. Pour syrup over top, leaving 1/2 inch headspace.
8 ) Secure sterilized two piece lids on jars and place in a boiling water bath. Process for 20 minutes.
9) Admire the jars.
10) The following day, remove the rings. Wipe the residual sticky-ness from the jars with a warm wet cloth and label each lid with the product and date. Store in a cool, dark place until use.
Waste Not, Want Not
As I noted, any mushy bits or tiny pieces were reserved for peach jam. I added whole crushed allspice, cinnamon stick, and cloves in a sachet to my standard Pomona’s peach jam recipe.
When I ran out of space in the canner and time in my afternoon, I scooped out remaining peach pieces and made them into cobbler.
Peach juice in light syrup was left. There was no way I could toss the beautiful nectar so I reheated it and canned some in pint jars the next day. Three pints went straight into the fridge for Momo Sake drinks.
Quantity
I reserved approximately 10 pounds of peaches we picked at Branstool for fresh eating. With the remaining 33 pounds, about 2.5 pecks, I ended up with:
12 pints pieces
7 half pints jam
6 pints nectar
6 cups leftover pieces (i.e. I could have canned 3 more pints if I had the time and space)
Using Canned Peaches
We don’t buy canned peaches because what’s available in the grocery does not remotely resemble the fruit I know and love. I plan to use what I made myself in smoothies, poured over yogurt and as an addition to fruit desserts. Though the kitchen was outrageously sticky at the end of the peach canning extravaganza, I know I will not regret the mess in deep winter when I taste summer by simply opening a jar.
Have you canned peaches at home? How do you do it?
Tomorrow, I will conclude Peach Week by sharing my trick for canning peaches in record time and five songs to enjoy while doing so.
Looking forward to tomorrow’s post already! I haven’t done any canning for weeks, but I would love to try peaches. I go back and forth over whether or not I like peaches; I love the sourness I get from nectarines, apricots, and plums.
With all the preserving you do, do you have a MILLION jars? I want to preserve sliced peaches, peach jam, apricot jam, plum jam, plums, and TOMATOES. Thankfully I have a ton of shelf space in the basement, but still…I feel like I’m always buying jars. Then again, I do have a lot because I use them for food storage for my bulk goods. So maybe it’s just me, LOL.
I do have a ton of jars! Maybe I should write a post on how I manage them because there’s a near constant cycle of filling, emptying and storing.
That would be great! And there’s not only the jars to worry about- all those lids and rings! So far I’ve only invested in 3 of the quart size freezer containers (perfect for my Jeni’s recipes!), but I was thinking about getting a few smaller ones to freeze green zebra tomato sauce.
I can my peaches in a very similar way with one exception – I put one halved peach at the top of my non-wide mouth jar to act as a stopper for all of the other peaches that want to hang out at the top. I don’t know that it makes any difference, and yet I do it every time.
Hmmm…I packed the fruit in very tightly and didn’t have trouble with floaters.
I am planning on canning peaches this year. Other years I have frozen them and it worked out really well. They were still quite firm when defrosted.
Okay… here is what we did:
Washed, halved and pitted peaches.
)
(Didn’t skin so as not to lose color/nutrients) (oh, yeah, and I’m lazy
Packed TIGHT these halves pit side down in jars.
Had light syrup (1 c sugar to 4 c water) at a boil and added a splash of pure cranberry juice (tart and colorful).
Poured syrup over peaches in jars and de-bubbled.
Lidded and popped in boiling water bath for 15 min.
I can peaches very much like you do, except I use quart jars instead of pints. Even the quart jars don’t stay full long, once we open one. We especially like our canned peach slices atop cottage cheese. Yum! The peaches on our tree aren’t quite ripe yet, but in the next few weeks we should have our first year of home grown peaches. We will also get some from my in-laws or the local farmer’s markets. I can’t wait!
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Great post! I love to can peaches – usually do peach halves only because I like to put a scoop of icecream in the center! I infuse my syrup with a lot of fresh ginger. The resulting peachy gingery syrup makes the most amazing cocktails and smoothies.
Ginger and peach are natural companions. I’ll try that with some of the leftover syrup once we start opening jars.
All of hte recipes I have seen for canning peaches is for halves. And I want to do slices. Mainly because I have pint jars and they are easier to store than quart jars for me.
Did you add any citric acid or ascorbic acid to prevent discoloration? I see that the recipe on the National Center for Home Food Preservation calls for it. I bought half a bushel of peaches this weekend and they will be ready tomorrow. And I am about peach jamed out so am looking at some other way to use them.
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This is, perhaps, a silly question. But I’ve just made my first batch of home canned pears {with ginger slices} and peaches {with vanilla beans}. I’m wondering how long I should wait before I open a jar and see how I fared? Any idea?
We offer the canned fruits and vegetables,
as the canned pear, cann ed peach, canned cherry and so on,
most specs is available,
If you need anything, welcome to contact, i am export@adufood.cn, Michelle