Canning Peaches

My kids love canned peaches, but I hate the fact that they are packed into an aluminum containers (which is most likely sprayed with silicon by the way) and most of the time the sugary juice they are sitting in has some questionable ingredients.  

So I try to can my own when I can, but let me be clear:  unless you or your neighbors have a peach tree in the back yard, canning purchased peaches will not save you money.  Usually I can find canned peaches for around $.88-97 a can.  Last week peaches were on sale - 17lbs for almost $14.  I believe this was an amazing sale for fresh peaches.  After cleaning our fresh peaches and cutting out some spoiled spots we were able to can 16 pints with 8 peaches left over for the kids to eat.  When I figure in the cost of the lids, the sugar (and other minor ingredients) plus my time I did not save money on canning the purchased peaches, but there is a major plus to home canned peaches: they are packed in glass jars (not aluminum) and the only other ingredients are water, sugar and a bit of salt and vinegar.  And for me that is a huge plus.

Ingredients for Canned Peaches

Sugar

Vinegar

Salt

Peaches

First, I meticulously cleaned my kitchen sink as that is where most of the action occurs.  We washed our peaches in water with a cup or two of vinegar for a few minutes in the sink.  This will kill 99% of germs and get the peaches nice and clean.  Once clean, I removed the peaches to a large bowl, drained the water from the sink and refilled it with cold water.  

Second, fill a couple of larger bowls with 8 cups of water, 2 T. of Vinegar and 1 1/2 T. of salt.  This soaking water will help keep your peaches from turning brown.  

Once you have your sink filled with cold water and your bowls ready for the skinned and cut peaches, bring a pot of water to a boil and drop your peaches in it.  I let mine sit in the hot/boiling water for 50 seconds (no more than a minute- you don't want to cook your peaches, just loosen the skins) and then instantly spooned them out and transferred them to the sink of cold water.  

Once the peaches were cool enough to handle (this doesn't take long), we removed the skins.  We decided to only cut our peaches in half and not into small slices.  I found it extremely easy to first cut the peach in half and then remove the skin and finally the pit.  As you can see in the above picture, the peaches are red where the pit was.  We scraped most of this red out not because it adds a bad flavor, but next year the jars will be entered into the fair and we thought they would look better without the redness.  Once you have sliced your peaches, let them soak in the vinegar/salt bath for about 10 minutes and then drain.

While all this was going on, I had the jars in the dishwasher and then I boiled them up along with the lids, funnel and spoons.  I also started the simple syrup.  To make the simple syrup you will use 1 cup of sugar to 3 cups of water.  Let this mixture come to a boil.

Fill your clean jars with peaches.  If cut in half, place the peaches sliced side down.  Then ladle in the syrup, wipe the lip of the jar with a clean cloth and top with the lid and rings.

Hot water bath the pints for 25 minutes.  Let sit undisturbed for a day to make sure the jars have sealed.  Remove the rings and clean the jars with a damp cloth.  Don't forget to label the jars so you will know when you canned them.