Winter fruit: a tasty treat – Redneck Cooking

One of the great things about fall are the fresh peaches. Here in Idaho I am fortunate enough to live in a part of the state that has a good season for growing peaches. I have one peach tree in my front yard and it is a good producer. Most years I get a good crop of peaches off this tree. We have had a few years that an early spring warm-up will get the tree to blossom out and then we get a cold snap to come back in and freeze the blossoms and kill off just about all the peaches.

Two years ago I got ten peaches off the tree. They were good but did not last very long. Last year I was able to can 28 quarts of peaches off of that one peach tree. Do you have any idea how many peaches that is? I can tell you that is a lot of flipping peaches.

I use the canned peaches for lots of things. I will put them in my oatmeal in the mornings, make my peach upside down cake with them. Take a jar to work for my lunch and use them as ice cream topping. Peach cobbler is another of my favorite recipes for fresh peaches. This year the peach tree was so loaded down with peaches it has nearly destroyed itself. Every time the wind would blow another branch would break. I ended up with another 28 quarts of canned peaches to get me through the winter.

Canning peaches is really a simple thing to do. It is time consuming but relatively inexpensive, and the peaches are so much better than any you can buy in the store. All you need to can peaches are sugar, canning jars, and fruit fresh.

The fruit fresh is a must-have if you do not want brown peaches. Peaches will turn brown quickly no matter how you handle them if you do not use the fruit fresh.

To start, wash your jars. In order to get the jars to seal they must be clean.

Next, prepare the syrup that the peaches will be canned in. The syrup I use is simply water and sugar. Because I do not pick my peaches until they are completely ripe, I use a light syrup that is one cup sugar to each quart of water. I have a large stock pot that I use for this. I mix the sugar into the water and bring the syrup to almost a boil. I add one teaspoon of fruit fresh for each cup of water.

While the syrup is heating up, I start water boiling in a smaller pan to heat up the peaches to peal them. In another stock pot I put cold water to put the peaches in after they are pealed and sliced. I also add fruit fresh to this water. I add 1 tsp per cup of water here too. Then I fill the sink with cold water to put the peaches in after they are taken out of the boiling water to cool down enough to peel.

Once the water is boiling, put in a few peaches so that they are completely covered and leave them in for a minute or two. Remove them from the boiling water and place them in the sink. After boiling them, the skin is very easy to take off and mostly you can just peel it off with your fingers. After peeling the peaches I slice them into wedges and put them in the cold water and fruit fresh.

When I have the stock pot full of sliced peaches, I transfer them to the hot pot of syrup.

Next I put a small amount of water into a shallow pan and bring it to a boil. This is for the lids and rings for the jars. The trick to getting the jars to seal is heat. If the lids are not hot they will not seal and the peaches will spoil.

Cook the peaches for five minutes or so and then get a few jars and lids ready. Boil the lids for about a minute. This will sterilize them as well as get them ready to seal.

Fill the jars with peaches to just below the neck and then fill to just below the rim with syrup. Wipe any syrup that may be on the rim of the jar off so that the rim is clean. Place a lid on the jar and secure it tightly with a ring. Place the jar under a towel on the counter to cool. You want to keep the jars under the towels so that they cool slowly. If the jars cool too fast they can shatter and the lids may not seal. As the jars cool the syrup inside contracts and creates a vacuum that will suck down the lid. You will hear the lids popping for a while as they cool. This is how you know they are sealing.

Once the jars are cool, wipe them off with a damp cloth to clean any syrup off them and then store them in the pantry or a spare closet. You now have plenty of tasty treat to enjoy anytime over the cold winter.