How To Can Peaches - Easy Canning Recipe
Learning how to can peaches is simple and easy and great canning recipe for beginners. Canned peaches can easily be made into many different desserts like sourdough peach cobbler, added on top of sourdough pancakes or waffles, or just enjoyed plain. Having canned peaches on the shelf ensures you’ll have plenty of fruit to eat during the long winter months when fresh fruit is harder to find.
Ingredients
- 1 bushel peaches about 50 pounds
- 2 gallons of water
- 4 cups of sugar
Instructions
Prepare Equipment
- Wash all of your jars and allow to air dry.
- Fill a large pot half full with hot water. Bring to a boil on the stovetop over medium-high heat.
- Place cold water and ice cubes if you have some available, in a large bowl.
- Mix up 4 cups of sugar and 2 gallons of water in another pot on the stove and start heating it over medium heat. This will be the syrup to pour over your peaches. If you want to make them sugar free, you can use 2 cans of apple juice concentrate and 2 gallons of water, or you can use just plain hot water too.
Prepare Raw Peaches
- Once the water on the stove is at a boil, turn down to a simmer and gently drop peaches into the water. Leave them in the water to “blanch” for about 2-3 minutes or until the peeling is just starting to come off (see video below).
- Using a slotted spoon, remove the peaches and place them immediately into the ice cold water to stop the cooking. You don’t want them to be mushy, just cooked long enough so the peels will come off easily.
- Continue blanching the peaches until you run out of room in your cold water bowl. You can keep you hot water at a slow simmer until you have room to blanch more peaches.
- Let peaches cool in the cold water for a few minutes, and peel them by just slipping the peelings off with your hand. I rarely have to use a knife.
- Cut the peeled peaches in half using a pairing knife. Remove the pits and place two pits in the bottom of each quart jar, or one pit if you're using pint jars (this will help preserve flavor and freshness).
- Put the peach halves into the jars, and cover with the hot syrup. You can also slice peaches into smaller pieces if desired.
Canning Process
- Wipe rim of the jar with a damp cloth to make sure there is no sticky juice on them.
- Place lids and rings on the top of the jars and hand tighten.
- Place jars in a boiling water-canner and process for 20 minutes.
- For more about the water bath canning process, see video below.
- Remove hot jars from canner using jar lifter and allow to cool at room temperature for a few hours and seal. If you're doing more than one canner load of peaches, it is best to add a little cold water to the canner before you put another round of cold jars into the boiling hot water. This will help prevent any jars from breaking. You don't want to lose any of those precious peaches after all that hard work.
- Remove rings, wash outside of jars if they are sticky, and then store on your pantry shelves.
Notes
Tips For Making Home-Canned Peaches
- If you purchase your peaches, you will want to sort them right away. You will know if they are ripe or not by gently pressing our finger into the peach. If it makes the slightest indentation, than it is ripe. The ripe peaches should be canned right away, and the green peaches can be put back into their boxes to continue to ripen at room temperature. Be sure to check on them daily so they don’t over ripen.
- The blemished or small and medium-sized peaches are much easier to make into peach sauce or peach butter.
- If you want to can peaches without any sugar, my favorite way to can them is in diluted apple juice concentrate. I usually put one can of apple juice concentrate with 3-4 quarts of water or to taste. Heat it on the stovetop and pour over peaches the same as you would the sugar syrup.
- Have your kids help you peel the peaches. Once they are blanched in hot water, and then placed in cold water, the peelings slip off easily by hand, without the use of a knife. My first memories of canning are peeling peaches with my Mom when I was probably 2 or 3 years old.
- I prefer to put my peaches in wide mouth jars because the peaches fit through the top easily. I usually can them in non-name brand quart jars, or old mayonnaise jars. You can tell those kind of jars because they won’t have any writing on the sides. They work fine for water bath canning, but shouldn’t be used for pressure canning. Since we water bath can peaches, they work perfectly for that.
- I prefer to do all of my canning outside if the weather allows. I use a camp chef outdoor stove.
- You can make a medium syrup or even a heavy syrup by adding more sugar to the water when mixing up your syrup. I prefer to have a light syrup, and don’t really think the peaches need the extra sugar.
