Canning Peaches

My first attempt at canning peaches in syrup was both easier and harder than I thought it would be.

Let's break it down.

Easier: When I preserve fruit, I usually make jam because that's what I'm used to doing. However, making jam is sticky, messy, scalding hot, and time-consuming. Canning in syrup is comparatively easy, since you just drop your halved/pitted fruit into a jar, pour hot syrup over top of it, screw on the top, then boil the whole caboodle for 15 minutes. Easy, right?

Harder: Sadly, it's not so easy to do it right. There were some tips and tricks I could have used to make the whole process more successful. You'll notice that the peaches are floating about a third of the way up the jar. That's because fresh peaches are light and full of little air pockets that don't come out until you cook the fruit.

Cold Pack vs. Hot Pack: The process I described above — adding fresh fruit to a jar and then pouring on hot syrup — is called a cold pack because the fruit is "cold" and raw prior to the final 15-minute boiling step. In a hot pack, the fruit is cooked before the final boiling step.

Tips & Tricks: To prevent floating fruit, lightly cook the peaches in your syrup water (1 cup sugar : 4 cups water) for 5 minutes. This helps to drive out the air and shrink the fruit so that (a) the fruit will become denser and not float as much, and (b) you can pack more fruit into your jar, which also cuts down on floating. Also, use a lighter syrup, e.g., 1:4 sugar:water ratio, rather than 1:2, as recommended by some recipes, so that the liquid will exert less buoyant force on the fruit.

Now let's take a moment to admire the picture of the purty peaches. Mmm, peaches...

Next up, sauerkraut!

Links:

• Simple Bites: Canning 101: The Basics
• Simple Bites: Canning Stone Fruits
• Putting Up with the Turnbulls: Peaches in Syrup