August 9, 2009

peach canning

We got 20 pounds of seconds peaches for $20 from Ela Family Farms at the farmers market yesterday (as well as strawberries, tomatoes, and basil!). We loaded up my panniers and headed home to start canning. This was our first time canning peaches so we wanted to try a few different recipes to see which we prefer.

With 15 pounds of peaches, we made:
  • 3 pints whole peach halves in apple juice
  • 4 pints peach butter (pureed with 2 c. sugar)
  • 5 pints stewed peaches (no added sugar)
We're also going to freeze some peach halves for smoothies, and we saved some to eat fresh of course.

Traditional canning recipes tend to be super heavy on the sugar, so we wanted to try some no/low sugar recipes. I'm interested in learning how to get pectin naturally--for example, from crab apples--but for now we'll enjoy peach butter instead of jam on our toast.


We previewed the peach butter on pancakes this morning and it was delicious!

2 comments:

  1. Note to self: According to http://www.pickyourown.org/jam.htm,

    "Using pectin dramatically reduces the cooking time, which helps to preserve the vitamins and flavor of the fruit, and uses much less added sugar."

    Hmm, it's still pretty expensive though.

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  2. I like the peach butter the best. It goes well in my yogurt.

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