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| I've got my eye on you! |
One of the best things about summer time here in Colorado, is the awesome fresh peaches. There are so many wonderful local farms that pick these lovelies and deliver them to their local farmers markets, grocery stores, or straight to you! This year, Wifey teamed up with some awesome besties (Morgan - Doula extraordinaire, and Bubbly Brooke) to support an awesome local cause, and get our domestication on! Each of us bought 20lbs of organic Colorado peaches and canned, spiced, churned (not really, but how else do you describe making peach butter!), and jellied our hearts out! While some are keeping peaches to eat all year round, others are giving them as gifts (or bribes ;) ) come the holiday season! Either way, people will get to enjoy the ‘fruits’ of our labor!
For those who have never canned (like Wifey) here is what we did:
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Canning Supplies
- 1
large sauce pot
- 1-2
large deep canning pots ~ (we used a crab pot and a canning pot, but it just has to be big enough to fit
several jars submerged completely)
- Tongs
- 12
wide mouth Quart Mason Jars with lids
- Colander
- Measuring
cups and spoons
- Serrated
knives
- dishcloths
Ingredients
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| Peachy |
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- LOTS
of peaches ~ 20 lbs or more
- Honey
- Apple
Cider Vinegar
- Salt
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Water
* For
making jelly, fruit butter, or spiced peaches you’ll need different ingredients
(maybe another post down the road!) but for now, we’re going to stick to just
straight canning.
Preparation
First
you have to sanitize the jars and lids. You can do this by boiling all of them in one of your large pots until
you’re ready to actually can, or you can be lazy like we were and put all of it
in the dishwasher and run a sanitize cycle ;) Either
way, sanitizing is priority!
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| Steamy! |
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While
you’re sanitizing, bring both large pots of water to a boil. Once boiling, add about 6-8 peaches at a time
(depending on the size of your pot) to one pot only. Blanch the peaches (fancy term for letting
them sit in boiling water for about 30 seconds to a minute), remove with tongs,
and immediately place them into a colander submerged in ice water (we also had
cold water running over them in the sink to help stop the cooking). You don’t want to cook the peaches! You just want to blanch them so the skins are
easy to pull off! Leaving them in the
boiling water for too long will just result in mushy fruit that will have to be
turned into something other than fresh canned peaches (ours went into spiced
peaches this day!). While you can do all
of the peaches at once, we found doing them in batches helped with the mess,
and with the assembly line!
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| Hot blanching action! |
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| Everyone out of the pool! |
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| Hit the showers! |
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On the
stove in your large sauce pot combine water and honey in a 3:1 ratio (or as our favorite Wifey says "or
however math works" ;) ). For those who
may be a little math impaired, that’s three cups of water, for every
one cup of honey for our simple syrup recipe. We
did 6 cups of water to 2 cups of honey, which covered about 75% of our fruit
(we made a second batch later, but it just depends on the juiciness of your
peaches and how tightly they’re packed into the jars). Normally, simple syrups are made with equal
parts of water and sugar, but we here think that:
1.
That’s too sugary and would prefer not to set our kids off on a sugar high
2. We
prefer a more natural approach, and can use locally farmed/obtained honey to
support our community
3. The
point is to taste the fresh peaches, not the sugary syrup they’re sitting in!
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| Simple? Syrup is! |
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Bring
the simple syrup to a rolling boil, stirring frequently. Now if you’re a fancy canner, you can add
fruit saver mixture to your syrup to protect the color of your peaches. Since we didn’t have any, we found a natural
substitute that worked just dandy! Apple
Cider Vinegar and salt. For 8 cups of simple syrup add 1 tbls of Salt
and 1tbls of Apple Cider Vinegar. We did
6 cups of liquid, so we had to convert to 3/4 of
a tablespoon of salt and apple cider vinegar.
Add
your corrected amount to the simple syrup and stir constantly until the salt is
completely dissolved. Take off the heat
and pour into a large measuring cup for easy transfer.
Take
the blanched peaches and pinch the skin gently until it tears. Gently peel the remainder of the skin off of
the peaches, and compost. Once all of
the peaches are peeled, set aside in a bowl for canning.
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| Peeling! |
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Remove
just the jars from your sanitizing bath (the dishwasher ;) ) and place in an
organized row for easy filling.
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| High Tech = Lazy Sanitizing |
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Take
your serrated knife and cut wedges of peeled peaches directly into the
jars.
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| Wedgy! |
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Any peaches with bruises or that
just don’t ‘look’ as awesome as the others can be tossed into a crock pot for
spicing/jams/butter.
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| Don't worry, you're gonna be something wonderful too! |
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Swirl the top of
the jar to help force the peaches in as tightly as they’ll go. Leave about an inch of space between the top
of the jar and the lid. Repeat this
process until all peaches are blanched, peeled, cut, and jarred. Put pits in a separate container or bowl for
planting or composting.
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| We're ready for our close up! |
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Once
all of the peaches are packed well into your jars, take the simple syrup and
pour into the jars until the fruit is submerged. You may have to wait while the liquid seeps
into all the nooks and crannies! Leave
about a half an inch of space between the top of the liquid and the lid of the
jar.
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| Gulp, gulp, gulp |
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Once all of the jars are full, wipe
the tops of the jars thoroughly with a clean cloth (the lids won’t seal
properly if there is debris on the mouth of the jar). Pull the tops of the jars out of the
sanitizing bath and place on top of each jar. Tightly screw on the lid over the top.
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| Clean as a whistle! |
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Once
all of the jars are sealed tightly, place them into the largest pot of boiling
water. We used a canning cage/carrier
for ease of removal. Make sure all of
the jars are completely submerged in the boiling water. Set the timer for 15 minutes, and get your
gossip on (or clean up, but we’d rather gossip!)!
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| Submerging! |
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| A nice hot bath! |
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After
15 minutes of boiling, CAREFULLY remove the jars from the water with tongs
(they make special canning tongs that help grab the top of the jar, but regular
tongs can be used too), and place on a dishcloth to cool. Do not touch/shake/turn/mess with the
jars. They need time to completely cool,
about 12-18 hours, and to seal completely. When you push the top of the jars the button should not pop back at
you. When you first remove the jars from
the boiling water, some may not have sealed completely yet and will make a
popping noise back at you, but if you’re patient, and you did everything
correctly, as the jars cool, they’ll seal and you won’t be able to pop the
button in the morning.
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| Hot!!! |
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Once
all of your jars are completely sealed, they can be stored for up to a year (if
you don’t consume all of their deliciousness first) in a dark, cool place.
Cantastic!
