Perfect Canned Peaches

We spend all year waiting for fresh, juicy BC peaches, and when peach season is finally here it never seems like it's long enough. Luckily it's very easy to preserve your own peaches so you can have the sweet taste of summer even in the middle of winter. It's a really nice kitchen project to do with friends, family, or just your favourite playlist! The basic method is: pack your peeled and cut peaches in sterilized jars, cover them with simple syrup leaving 1/4" - 1/2" space at the top of the jar, put the lids on the jars, and immerse them fully in boiling water for 25 mins. Once you've removed the jars and they've cooled, you can press down on the lids to test if they're properly sealed. If a lid bounces back the jar is not sealed. (You can repeat sealing process or refrigerate and eat within a week.) But we've put together a list of detailed tips to help you can the perfect peaches to enjoy year round!

Get the right equipment

- Quart jars (with lids and rings) are a great size for peaches—they're big enough to handle generous slices or halves, and small enough to be easy to manage when hot and for portions that are right for a single recipe.

- Getting an actual water bath canner rather than just using a big pot is a worthwhile and inexpensive investment—they come with a rack to keep the jars from sitting on the bottom of the pot so water can flow around, and they make it a lot easier to lower and lift all your jars at once.

- A jar lifter will also make it a lot easier to pick up individual jars while they are still hot.

Pick The Right Peaches

- Make sure you find freestone peaches because it's much easier to remove their pits. Clingstone peaches, as their name implies, have fruit that is very difficult to separate from their pits, which means more work and smaller, messier slices.

- You want to find the Goldilocks zone of ripeness: your peaches should be fairly firm, but definitely not rock hard.

Easy Peeling

- Blanching your peaches makes them super easy to peel. Boil a pot of water big enough for all your peaches. Turn the water down to a simmer and add the peaches for just 30 seconds. As soon as you take them out of the boiling water, plunge them in an ice bath and wait until they're cold. At this point the skins should come away with hardly any effort at all.

Customize Your Syrup

- It may take a few tries to figure out your personal preference, but it's worth knowing you can adjust the level of sweetness to taste by adding more or less sugar: from one part sugar to six parts water, up to one part sugar to two parts water (1:6 - 1:2). Just figure out your favourite ratio and simmer on a stovetop until the sugar is dissolved!

- You can also experiment with adding spices and herbs to your syrup, either as single flavours or in blends. Think cinnamon, ginger, vanilla, rosemary, thyme, lemon verbena...

Test Your Seal

Once your jars have cooled after being simmered, you can press down on the lids to test if they're properly sealed. If a lid bounces back the jar is not sealed—you can repeat sealing process or just refrigerate and eat within a week!

We hope you find these tips useful, and the preserving process super satisfying—and that you get to taste some wonderful memories of summer well into next January :)