This Is This Week

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This week, we finally scored some peaches on sale and made peach jam!

Each year, we try our hand at canning and/or jelly making, but we had yet to attempt any group canning efforts. I had made a variety of refrigerator pickles (dill and bread and butter) plus a pickled zucchini recipe.

But this week, Robyn and I pulled our acts together and made loads of peach jam.

Our Process

Unlike many jam or jelly recipes which require you to water bathe or pressure can your containers after filling them, we follow Robyn’s mom’s method:

Keep everything hot, work quickly, and place the jars upside down!

That’s the gist of our process. I’ll explain a bit more though.

We also strive to keep our jellies and jams lower in sugar than some traditional recipes. As a result, we use a special brand of pectin (Pomona’s Pectin) that works really well with low-sugar and honey-sweetened recipes.

The Recipe

• Approximately 15 pounds of peaches (which cooks down to about 26 cups of mascerated peaches)
• About 6 cups of cane sugar
• 19 and 1/2 teaspoons Pomona’s Pectin
• 26 teaspoons calcium water (the calcium packet comes in the box of pectin; prepare by mixing 1/2 tsp calcium with 1/2 cup water)

Directions

1. Wash your peaches and remove stems, if needed
2. Bring a large pot (like a stock pot or one you would use to cook spaghetti) of water to a boil. Meanwhile, fill a large metal mixing bowl with ice water (leaving room for water displacement).
3. When the water boils, add peaches in batches and blanch for several minutes.
4. Remove the peaches to the bowl of ice water to shock them and stop the cooking.
5. Peel the skins off (they should remove easily; test one peach to start and leave them in the boiling water longer if the skins are still difficult to remove). You don’t have to remove all the skins but try to remove most of them.
6. Halve the peaches to remove the pits.
7. Return the peaches to the large pot and simmer until the peaches begin to break down and are easily mashed with a potato masher.
8. You can either mash them all by hand for a chunkier jam or work in batches to blend the mixture in a blender.
9. Once broken down, measure your smashed or pureed peaches to ensure your pectin and sugar proportions are accurate. In general, for a jam, you want: 1/2-3/4 tsp pectin; 1/2-1 tsp calcium water; 1 Tbsp lemon juice; and 1/4-1/2 cup sugar per cup of mashed fruit
10. Return the mashed fruit mixture to the pot, add calcium water, and bring to a boil.
11. Once boiling, add your sugar and pectin (mixed together in a separate bowl).
12. Stir vigorously 1-2 minutes until pectin dissolves and fruit mixture returns to a boil.
13. Remove from heat.
14. Using hot jars and hot lids (we boil our lids in a pot of water on the stove and run the jars through the dishwasher, pulling them out when the contents are still super hot), pour jam into jars, quickly wipe the edges of the jar with a cloth dampened with white vinegar, and then quickly screw the lids on.
15. Once lid is tight, turn jar upside down and set on a large towel on the counter until mostly cool.
16. Once the jars have cooled, you can flip them right-side-up and check to ensure all have sealed (there should be no “popping” or “give” to the top when pressed).

I’m sure many people would take issue with our method, but jellies and jams never last long in our households. We’ve had no problem with the jellies and jams sitting on the shelf for a couple years and remaining perfectly safe to consume.

If you have any jars that don’t seal, store them in the fridge and use them first. We rarely experience this and if we do, it is the fault of an old lid.

I should add – we also do another canning “no-no” by using a variety of salvaged jars (old olive and artichoke jars, old store-bought jelly jars, etc). We do often use official Ball mason jars and lids too, but we carry on the methods Robyn’s mom used for decades of repurposing recycled jars.