Preserving Peaches
Tuesday, June 23, 2009 at 10:55AM Well, we've canned the first item of the year and it reminded me how much fun I had canning last year, but also how much work it is. A couple of weekends ago we passed by a row of roadside stands with South Carolina peaches for sale. We bought a big basket full with the intention of canning most of them. Only one of our peach trees in the orchard survived our attack goats, so alas, we will have no peaches of our own this year, but that's ok, I can be patient. So one night Tim and I spent hours in the kitchen ready to can peaches. Everything that I read said to blanch the peaches (put them in boiling water for just a few seconds, then put them in ice water). And the skins will slip right off. Then you are supposed to cut the peach in half to remove the pit and then slice it up. From here, you can simmer the slices in a simple sugar syrup for just a few minutes, then can them. It sounded easy enough, but we found that after the peaches were blanched, they would just mush apart as you tried to remove the pit. I think the peaches we bought were too ripe or maybe peeling by hand without blanching would have been a better way.
We did manage to get 5 quarts of mangled peach slices canned in syrup, but it took us 4 hours!! So,;)
since the peaches were very ripe, I decided to try to preserve them by making fruit leather in the dehydrator. This also sounded simple: just puree the peaches and then spread them on the dehydrator tray for 14 hours and you will get peach fruit roll-ups! I did this just before bed one night so the dehydrator could run all night long. I checked it at 10 hours figuring that this would not nearly be long enough and found an over dried brittle mess. Whoops! It doesn't taste very good at all. I think I need to work on this. Now I'm trying to figure out what I can possibly use this peach brittle for.
Well, with all that done, we still have a number of peaches left, but I've just decided to eat them fresh! The wild blackberries by the pond are just starting to ripen and so I've been eating fresh peaches and wild blackberries with just a drizzle of honey for dessert - it doesn't get any better than that!
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Reader Comments (17)
I love fresh peaches! They will freeze very well, especially when ripe, and turn into something like a sorbet when thawed. I like to eat them still partially frozen Peaches to can need to be just ripened but still pretty firm, I think. One of my favorite childhood memories was picking peaches from my grandparents' orchard and selling them door to door in the neighborhood to earn spending money for the Illinois State Fair.
There is an old Southern Living recipe for making peach pie filling and then freezing it, inside foil and inside the pie pan/plate you will eventually bake it in. When it comes time to bake the pie inside a crust, you make the crust put it into the same pie plate you froze the filling in, and then put the pie "brick" into the crust and bake, frozen.
Another option to avoid the freezer is to make peach butter. Search on a recipe for pear butter in the crockpot and then make the substitution. Then you can process the jars of peach butter and you're back in business with shelf storage.
Now I wish I had some peaches left!! I couldn't resist them and ate them all!!
My wife and I switched to freezing, because canning was becoming such a challenge. We still use jars for jams, bbq sauce and ketchup, but the fruits and veg get blanched, bagged and frozen. Once the freezer is full, we'll dig out the jars and lids. Until then......
I over-dried some figs a couple of years back and found that they worked well cooked into oatmeal. They were much too hard to eat as is, but I put them into the cooking oatmeal about halfway through the cooking and they softened up perfectly... and made a nice fruit addition to my otherwise plain oatmeal.
peach jam is always an option and it is super yummy. I make it without pectin and just let the peaches and sugar boil til they look ready, 20-60 minutes. Very forgiving, and if it doesn't set right, we just put it over ice cream. Also, blackberry peach cobbler is fabulous.
Hi, Liz. One of our favorite peach recipes is called Peach Honey. Take 12 peaches and one orange. Pulverize in the food processer, orange rind and all. I do take the seeds out. Add an equal amount of sugar, and cook until thick. Process in boiling water bath. It is delicious, and my family fights over it. It's from an old Farm Journal cookbook for freezing and canning. It's worth the time.
It's possible that the kind of peaches you bought are not the best for canning. There are lots of peach farms where we live in central Texas and they advertise different sorts of peaches--varieties bred for eating fresh, varieties that fall easily away from the pit for making pies, and so forth. I'm not sure what variety of peach is best for canning.
Hey Liz! I am so glad to hear that I am not the only one fumbling through figuring out the best ways to preserve food! I keep making mistakes (which we usually can eat!) and moving forward. Maybe one year I will get it all just right, but probably not cause I will just keeping trying new things.
Thanks for sharing!
Sounds like you had cling-stones... they're good for pickling not canning. Free stones are better for making canned peaches (we do them in halves and the left over bits in chunks because my sons like peaches in their yogurt and those little chunks are perfect!).
I just got a bunch of peaches to pickle yesterday as well as strawberries and blackberries... the kitchen should be smelling good soon :)
Ooohhh! That makes a lot of sense about different types of peaches. Another good reason to know your farmer so that you can ask these types of questions. Unfortunately, all I know was that they were from a relatively close SC farm. We actually have one peach tree with 28 small peaches on it! I sure hope the bugs don't get them before we do.
Cynthia - I'm the same as you! I make notes all over my preserving books about the mistakes I made so that I don't do them again, but then I find myself going to a different recipe all together!
cool
I am setting up the kitchen now to start making Peach Salsa, Peach Jalapeno Jelly, Peach Butter and hopefully just some sliced peaches.
I will share how the end product turns out.
Wow! I bet your back and feet are going to be tired tonight! I always feel worn out after a long day in the kitchen. I hope you get through everything you had planned. It all sounds delicious!
I wanted to freeze peaches, then use them in a peach crisp. Has anyone done that and if so, how much sugar did you use?
Yes, I did freeze some, although have not used them yet. I actually froze them in apple juice rather than sugar syrup. I just sliced the peaches, put them in a bag, then covered them with apple juice.
I am in the middle of picking 5 peach trees. My fav is our 2 cling free's. This year I am using my freezer (which is already half full with apples, grapes, pears, and apricots). I am planning on freezer jam, peach chunks (peeled and quartered, soaked in lemon water, placed on a cookie sheet and frozen) and amaretto pecan peach preserves. I can just imagine the smells and tastes! Yum!