Just Peachy

We did it. Clara and I put up 18 quarts of peaches. Bright sunshine of the season captured in Ball jars.

Not only that, we discovered that there are all sorts of surprises when you take an entire afternoon and spend it with a half bushel of fruit. Like, the sunset-red blush of a scalded peach that’s just slipped its skin. And the taste of juice squeezed from the discarded skins – essence of peach. And the nectar that clings to the sieve when you strain that juice, melting like cotton candy on the tongue. All this even before that moment in the dead of winter when you open the jar and let a bit of summer escape onto your tongue.

Canning is much easier than you’d think and it makes me feel famous. Virtuous. Lucky. Here’s a step-by-step description, which we put together ourselves from various sources –

FIRST
We started with an inventory of our canning equipment: hot water bath canner – basically a big, speckled-black pot with a wire rack; a bunch of quart jars (I bought a dozen new ones at the new Takoma Park Ace Hardware, 20 percent off all canning supplies!). If you’re using last year’s jars, be sure the lids are new – you can get those at the hardware store, too. I also have a handy set of tongs for lifting the hot jars out of the water bath. And I bought a jar funnel to make it easier to fill the jars, but we didn’t use it. I used Joy of Cooking for instructions, supplemented by some web site info.

SECOND
Next step: one of the best parts. We went to the Takoma Park Farmer’s Market and bought a half bushel of fragrant peaches from Twin Springs Fruit Farm (Thanks, Joseph, for hauling them to the car for me!). While we were at it, I bought some pea shoots for salad, a few ears of corn, some perfectly-ripe cantaloupe and brilliantly red bell peppers. The market is bountiful this time of year, it makes me want to can everything in sight, since I can’t eat nearly enough to do the harvest justice.

Back home, the process really began:
1) Gather three big pots: #1 for the canning itself (that’s the water bath canner), #2 for boiling water to scald the peaches, and #3 for heating syrup or apple juice (we used apple juice). Make sure you have tongs ready, too, for lifting peaches out of boiling water (you’ll see why in a second). And a paring knife for slicing.
2) Wash the jars and lids in sudsy water and rinse thoroughly. If your kitchen is small like mine, good luck finding space for them to dry!
3) Fill the sink with ice water.
4) Boil the water in pot #2. Pop the peaches in a few at a time, for just a few seconds (say, 10 or 20). This loosens the skins. But you don’t want to cook them, so to stop the cooking process, take them from the boiling water (with those tongs you’ve got ready) and put them in the ice water, where they’ll float around until they get their turn at being skinned, which is the next step.
5) Peel the peaches. This should be easy, since you scalded them – but some of the skins are kind of stuck on there. If this happens, pop them back into the boiling water for a few more seconds, or else just peel the skins with a knife (which I find handy to start even the easy-to-peel ones).
6) Slice the peaches. Or, you can leave them in halves – we sliced.
7) While all this is happening, put apple juice (or sugar syrup, which you make with one part sugar to one part water) in a pot and heat it to a simmer.
8) Once the peaches are sliced, put them in the jars, getting as many in there as you can without having them stick out too high (you don’t want them to touch the lids once they lids are screwed on). Pour the boiling apple juice or syrup on top of them, to within a half inch of the top of the jar. Screw on the dry lids, and place each jar in the rack of the water bath canner.
9) Boil in the canner for 30 minutes.
10) Remove from canner with the canning tongs.
11) Cool jars with lots of space between them. The books and instructions say to keep them away from drafts. Don’t touch them while they cool.
12) One of the coolest parts: while you’re eating your dinner, or reading the paper that night, you’ll hear a little a “pop,” out of nowhere, then maybe 10 minutes later, a “ping.” This is the pressure pulling the little lid toward the peaches – sealing the jars with a vacuum.

A quick note: we chose the “cold pack” method, which means we didn’t cook the peaches first (thinking that they would retain more of their nutritional value that way). But. Our peaches shrank once they were all jarred up and cooling. They are safe to eat, but a jar that’s only half full is not as great as a jar full of fruit. Next time we’ll try hot pack: you only “cook” the peaches for a few seconds, by immersing them in the juice or syrup, before packing – and it looks as though you can really fit a lot more fruit into the jars. Anyone have experience with this?

Last time we canned peaches, two years ago, Clara pulled the jars out in winter and made peach cobbler. Yum.