Canned peaches, whole, halved, or sliced is one of the easiest ways to preserve these tasty fruits for the winter. With some basic equipment and only three simple ingredients in our jars, you’ll be able to enjoy the warm summer flavors of peaches when the cold, dark winter days come around.
What you’ll need to make your own home canned peaches
Make sure you have some basic kitchen equipment. Water bath canners are certainly a nice investment to have, and they don’t cost much. But no worries if you don’t have one! You can also water bath can in a large stockpot.
How to water bath can without a water bath canner
- Use a large stockpot!
- You need to make sure your pot is big enough to hold the jars along with enough water to fully cover them by 1″-2″.
- Place a dish towel on the bottom to prevent your jars from coming into direct contact with the bottom of the pot.
- Put the lid on top and boil away 😀
Ingredients
You’ll need some
- ripe peaches, of course.
- sugar
- water
We prefer to can in extra light syrup, but if you’d like a sweeter canned peach, by all means go for it. The recipe card will have instructions for the amounts of sugar you’ll need for your preferred syrups.
There isn’t really a set amount of peaches you need to have in order to can. If you wanted you could can only one or two jars at a time.
A pint jar will hold 2-3 peaches each. While a quart will hold 4-5 peaches each. Assuming you’re not working with a giant peach or anything 🙂
Preparing Your Jars
In warm soapy water, wash your jars, lids and rings. Even if they are clean, just clean them again. We do not want our food to spoil or anyone to get sick. So, wash the jars you plan to use today.
Allow them to air dry in a drying rack or on a dish towel.
You can also get your water bath canner filled and warming now. They are carrying a lot of water, so it takes a while to warm up.
If you are using a water bath canner with a rack, set the rack to hang off the rim, above the warm water below. Place the clean, dried jars into the rack to warm up with the water.
Otherwise, you may need to fill another pot with water and place your jars in there, gently keeping them warm to receive the peaches.
Or, another alternative altogether, and one that I love using, is the cold pack method. (More on that below)
Making Canned Peaches
Time to get started with the fun stuff.
First step, lets blanch, peel, and pit our peaches.
To do this, bring a large pot of water to boil. Cut an “x” into each peach and then place them into the boiling water for about 30 seconds.
After they’ve cooked for a few seconds, remove the peaches and place into an ice bath.
By blanching the peaches we can easily remove the skins and pits.
Once, blanched and peeled it’s time to remove the pits. It’s so much easier to slice up your peaches than it is to remove the pit while trying to leave the peach whole.
Make the most of your ingredients. Save the pits and skins to make peach syrup later!
Filling your jars
To make a syrup or not make a syrup?
When it comes to water bath canning fruit you’ll often need to use a bit of sugar. You can opt to simply add water, but you must use the hot pack method if you choose to go without any added sugar.
The good news for those of us who want to reduce our sugar intakes, but also like to make life a little easier in the kitchen, is that you can make an extra light syrup to go on your peaches. Or, you can use a natural sweetener like honey!
Syrups for canning
- Extra light syrup – 20% sugar. Combine 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar with 5 1/2 cups of water.
- Light Syrup – 30% sugar. Combine 2 1/4 cups granulated sugar with 5 1/4 cups of water.
- Medium syrup – 40% sugar. Combine 3 1/4 cups granulated sugar with 5 cups of water.
- Heavy syrup – 50% sugar. Combine 4 1/4 cups granulated sugar with 4 cups water.
- Honey – 1 cup of honey combined with 4 cups of water.
Hot Pack Method
Cook peaches, one layer at a time in your preferred syrup. Cook until the peaches are warmed all the way through.
Pack the hot peaches into hot jars leaving a 1/2″ headspace. Ladle the hot syrup over the peaches (that you just added to the jar), making sure to leave that 1/2″ headspace.
Using a butter knife, remove any air bubbles that got trapped when adding the syrup to the jars.
Repeat until all the peaches have been packed into jars.
Wipe the rims clean. Add lids and rings, tightening to finger tip tightness. Boil pints for 20 minutes and quarts for 25 minutes. Depending on altitude you may need to adjust the cook time. The higher up you are the longer the jars will need to cook.
Cold Pack Method
Now, this method my friends is my favorite. Although the fruit is more likely to float after cooking. Not the worst thing ever! The fruit is still perfectly safe and yummy to eat. If anything, it may not last as long as hot packed peaches.
Add peaches to the jars leaving a 1/2″ headspace. Ladle syrup over the peaches. Depending on how thick you like your syrup you may need to heat it up to fully dissolve the sugar. For the extra light syrup, you don’t need to heat it in order to dissolve the sugar.
Remove any air bubbles. Top off with more syrup if needed.
Clean the rims and add lids and rings. Tighten to finger tip tightness.
Add the jars to the water bath canner or stockpot ensuring at least 1″ of water over the tops of your jars.
Warm the water and jars together. When a boil is reached, process pints for 20 minutes and quarts for 25 minutes.
After processing
Remove the lid from the pot and allow the jars to sit for about five minutes. Prepare some counter space with a towel. Using a jar lifter carefully remove the jars from the pot and place on the towel. Leave them undisturbed for at least 12 hours.
As they cool you may hear some popping sounds as the lids seal to the jars. You also might not hear anything, which is fine. Some lids seal silently.
The next day, remove the rings from the jars. Check the lids for a seal, if there is any jar that didn’t seal, place those jars in the fridge and use up those fruits first.
Wash the jars, label and store.
What can you do with canned peaches?
Use these home canned peaches for anything you’d use fresh peach slices for. Put them in a cobbler, crisp, crumb bars. Top off your yogurt with some peaches, snack on them, and even use the syrupy leftovers to make homemade peach lemonade. Delicious 😀
Looking for more ways to preserve peaches for the winter? Check out this simple, three ingredient peach jam recipe.
Canned Peach Slices
Equipment
- 1 water bath canner or large stockpot
- quart or pint canning jars
- lids and rings
- 1 jar lifter
Ingredients
Peaches
Water
Sugar
Instructions
Preparing your jars
- Wash jars, rings, and lids in warm soapy water. Allow jars, lids and rings to airdry on a towel or drying rack.
- Place your jars in the rack of your water bath canner, or in a pot of warm water. Keep them heating while you prepare your peaches, if using the hot pack method.
Prepping your peaches
- Bring water to a boil in a large pot.
- Cut an "x" into the bottom of each peach. Place the peaches into the boiling water for 30 seconds. Remove from the boiling water and place peaches into an ice water bath to cool. Repeat until all peaches have been blanched.
- Once the peaches have cooled enough to handle, remove skins from the peaches.
- Cut peach into slices. If using the cold pack method, pack peach slices into jars now.
Prepare your syrup
- Extra light syrup – 20% sugar. Combine 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar with 5 1/2 cups of water.Light Syrup – 30% sugar. Combine 2 1/4 cups granulated sugar with 5 1/4 cups of water.Medium syrup – 40% sugar. Combine 3 1/4 cups granulated sugar with 5 cups of water.Heavy syrup – 50% sugar. Combine 4 1/4 cups granulated sugar with 4 cups water.Honey – 1 cup of honey combined with 4 cups of water.
- If using the hot pack method, cook peaches, one layer at a time in the syrup. Cook until the peach slices have been warmed through.
- Place hot peaches into hot jars, ladle syrup over the peaches leaving a 1/2" headspace. If using the cold pack method, ladle warm syrup over the cool peaches, leaving a 1/2" headspace.
- Using a butter knife, remove any air bubbles that were trapped when adding the syrup.
- Wipe the rims clean. Place lids on jars and tighten rings to finger tip tightness.
Canning your peaches
- Add jars to the water bath canner or stockpot. Ensure there is at least an inch of water over the tops of the jars. Bring water to a rolling boil with the lid on the pot.
- Process pints for 20 minutes and quarts for 25 minutes.
- Turn off the heat and remove the lid from the pot. Allow the jars to sit for five minutes.
- Carefully lift jars out of the canner and place them onto a towel lined counter space.
- Allow them to sit undisturbed for 12-24 hours.
- Remove rings and check the jars for seals. Any jars that did not seal should be placed in the fridge and used up within a few days.
- Wash sealed jars, label, and store.
Love this! I’ve always wanted to can food but never have. I have a great peach-glazed pork chops recipe that these would be perfect for! Thanks for sharing!