Living in Wisconsin, we don't see (m)any peach harvests since peach trees aren't necessarily grafted for our growing zone, so when the truck came on Wednesday, I thought I'd give my first try at processing peaches.
First, let me say....... all those YouTube videos are wonderful and great, but.... THEY LIE! Soooo many of them were saying, "oh, if you're new to canning....peaches are the easiest way to start."
Ummm...
No.
NOT that the canning process was necessarily all that difficult, but... PUTZY! AND, if you're really trying to keep the peaches looking "nice" in the jars.... goodness. What a putzy putzy process. If one is new to the canning process, I would suggest PICKLES! Now, THOSE are easy-peasy!
I'm just glad I started the day processing enough for the 7 quarts to fill a canner, because once I had enough to fire up the canner (which took about 2 hours), then I shifted to preparing 18 lbs for a 6-gallon wine batch. Now THAT was easy peasy!
The recipe calls for 2.5 lbs of prepped peaches per gallon, but I don't mind having a little extra fruit. Roughly 3+ lbs of whole fruit were weighed out; 3 batches were peeled and 3 were left with peels on (recipe doesn't call for peeling). Pitting these were fast because I didn't really care if the fruit ended up getting 'smushed' or broken; it's all gonna be mush once juiced anyway.
Each vac bag was filled with around 3 lbs of fruit (I kept adding a bit more each batch), sealed, and tossed in the freezer. Six bags, 3 lbs each... all ready for wine prep (most likely on Sunday).
The corner table still held some fruit, but I wasn't about to process them into a few more quart jars for canning. Nope. Done with that for now. Instead, we searched out a few recipes...
All that's left after supper.... stuffffffed
and Peach Jelly Recipe from the peelings...
YUM!
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