Preserving Peach Recipes

Mostly, we just canned the peaches in light syrup.  Our recipe and methods come from the Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book.  They have a lovely chart for canning and freezing all sorts of stuff!  Anyway, here's how we canned our peaches:

Peel the peaches (not too fun) by scoring an x in the bottom of each peach, then dip them in boiling water for a couple miniutes.  Then pull them out and put them straight in cold water.  The peels should just "peel" right off (tee hee).

Halve and core the peaches.  Some of them ended up quartered to get the pits out.

Put the sliced peaches in jars which have been thoroughly cleaned and kept in warm water.

As soon as one jar is filled with fruit, we fill it with hot light syrup (recipe below) leaving 1/2 inch headroom.

Wipe the rims, put on the lids, and process for 25 min for pints, 30 min for quarts. (To keep the earlier-filled jars warm while we fill the rest of the jars, we put them in a sink full of hot water.  We do this so that the jars don't get too cold and crack when we put them in the water bath).

Light syrup recipe:

Mix 4 cups water with 1 cup sugar to make 4 cups syrup.  Allow 1/2 to 2/3 cups syrup for each 2 cups fruit.

Bring to boil and keep simmering until ready to fill jars.

Add to fruit-filled jars for raw-pack canning.  Add fruit to hot syrup and bring to boil, then fill jars with fruit and syrup for hot-pack canning.  (We do raw-pack canning because its safe for peaches.  Its not safe for all fruits, though).

We did make some peach salsa, too. . .

Recipe for Peach Salsa (I don't know where Clint found this recipe, but he got it off-line somewhere):

12 cups chopped peaches
2 cups chopped onions
2 cups chopped red bell peppers
4 jalapeno peppers, seeded and finely chopped
2 banana peppers, seeded and finely chopped
1 cup loosely packed cilantro
1/2 cup white wine vinegar, 5% acidity
1/2 cup balasamic vinegar, 6% acidity
4 tablespoons lime juice or juice of 2 limes
2 cup firmly packed ligtht brown sugar

Bring entire mixture to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes.

Ladel into pint jars, leaving 1/2 inch head room and process for 15 minutes in a water bath.

This recipe is good, but its very sweet, so it doesn't really go with Mexican food.  But, is still good for chips and salsa as a snack.

We also made some peach fruit leathers with our ancient dehydrator.  This was really simple, and they turned out really well, too.  Some of them a bit dry, but tasty, nonetheless!

Basically, just puree the peaches in a blender or processer and add sugar or honey if its not quite sweet enough for you (we did some of both, both taste good).  Then, spread on parchment paper about 1/4 inch thick, then dry in dehydrator until slightly sticky and fruit-leather like (this took us a couple days, but just check it regularly til its done).  Finally, after its dry, cut it into fruit-leather size strips, roll in wax paper and store in canning jars or in freezer bags.

Yum!