Problems Preserving Peaches

 

Last week, I made my annual Palisade Peach Pilgrimage and this year, the family came too.

We had a blast tasting and picking peaches.

At the end of two days, we came home with several cases of ripe delicious peaches.

Once home, the race was on to get them all put up and preserved before they rotted in the boxes. If you don't know what that involves, check out this post: "Processing all those Peaches".

Maybe it was because I was rushing to get everything done. Maybe it was because my canning skills have suddenly failed me. Maybe it was because I didn't have a team of helpers canning with me this year. Or maybe it was just the curse of canning peaches, but literally, everything that COULD go wrong when canning peaches DID go wrong: jars failed to seal, jars broke in the canner, and several jars overflowed their juices all over the place leaving a huge void where there should be peaches.

After all of that trouble, I did a little research to address each possible peach preserving peril and pitfall, so you can be positively prepared if they ever happen to you.

PROBLEM #1: Jars fail to seal

Symptoms:
Button on jar lid doesn't "pop down" when it cools, and when you push on the top of the lid, it moves.

Possible causes:

• Bad or old lid
• Too little or too much head room in the jar
• Forgot to wipe rim
• Didn't process long enough 

What to do about it:

• If all of your lids seal but one, put the unsealed jar in the fridge. Sometimes, the rapid change in temperature will force the hot air out and create the vacuum necessary for the jar to seal. If it seals this way, leave the band off the jar for storing so that, if the seal fails, you know right away.
• If it doesn't seal, keep it refrigerated
• Never re-use canning lids, unless they are designed to be re-used (like Tattler lids)
• Follow recipe instructions precisely to avoid sealing problems in the future
• Make sure you take altitude into consideration and adjust canning times accordingly.

PROBLEM #2: Jar breaks inside the canner

Symptoms: 
This one's pretty easy to diagnose. You suddenly see the entire contents of a jar floating around in the canner, OUTSIDE the jar.

Possible causes:

• Old jar
• Cracked jar
• Jar created suction to bottom of the canner
• You drop jar in the canner (that's what I did)

What to do about it:

• Depends on what stage of the canning process you're in. For me, it happened with the first jar I put in the canner. So I turned off the heat on that canner and fired up another one to process all the other jars. Meanwhile, I fished out the broken bottom of the jar, dumped the now contaminated water, refilled it with clean water, and put it back on the stove.
• If it happens while you're processing all of your jars, just continue processing and deal with it later. After you've pulled out the remaining good jars, let them cool and then wipe them down with a soapy wet cloth. Clean out the canner and get back to it.
• It's a good idea to check your jars for imperfections before you start filling them with boiling hot contents. And make sure the jars haven't cooled before you add the boiling hot contents.
• Also, use a rack on the bottom of your water bath canner to prevent jars from forming a suction to the bottom.

PROBLEM #3: Liquid boils out leaving excessive headroom (AKA "siphoning")

Symptoms:
You pull the boiling hot jar out of the canner and liquid starts bubbling and spewing out of the jar through the lid, getting sticky stuff everywhere. When it cools, it looks like you forgot to fill half of the jar with peaches and syrup.
 
Possible causes:

• Too much fruit in the jar; jar is too full
• Didn't release all the air bubbles after adding syrup
• Didn't wipe the rim
• Too much or too little headroom
• Didn't let the jars "rest" after their time in the canner
• Temperature outside the canner is too cold
• Mysterious other reason

What to do about it:

• If you lose a significant amount of liquid to siphoning, but it still seals, it's fine. But, as a precaution, take the band off to store it so you know right away if the seal fails.
• If it doesn't seal, refrigerate the jar.
• Peaches are notoriously unforgiving. Follow instructions precisely. 
• Make sure your headroom is perfect. 
• Use a knife or spatula to release any air bubbles trapped between the fruit, and fill the jar back up to the proper head space. You may want to do this step two or three times, just to be sure.
• One website I read said you need to take the lid off the canner to vent it for 10 minutes before pulling the jars out. Also, I was canning outside at midnight, and the abrupt change to the cool nighttime outdoor temp could have made the siphoning worse.

At the end of the day, sometimes sh*t just happens, even when you do everything right. Accept that you get to eat a jar or two now, and move on with life. I recommend eating them over vanilla ice cream.

Processing all those peaches

So the day after returning from my journey to the Western Slope for peaches, I had to start processing my fruit or risk losing it. I started by blanching peaches, a few at a time, then dropping them into my bowl of ice water.

Then I slipped the skins off into a separate bowl and sliced the peaches into wedges.

I first tried to simply half and pit them, but the flesh was so tender it practically disintegrated as I twisted the halves apart, so I resorted to slicing each peach into about 8-10 sections.

I dropped the sliced fruit into a bowl of 1 cup lemon juice to 2 cups water, and saved the peels to boil down for jelly later.

Then I sterilized jars and prepared the syrup. I prefer a really light syrup to a very heavy sugary one so I used a 1 to 3 ratio of sugar to water. As with pickling brine, I always prepare more than I think I will need so I don't have to stop midway through canning to boil more.

Once the jars were ready and syrup hot, I packed the jars with fresh peaches and ladled the syrup over, being extremely precise not to over-fill with either peaches or syrup. Half inch headroom MEANS half inch headroom with peaches because the syrup tends to boil over after the long processing time and if you fill it too full, it will boil out too much, leaving you with dry peaches at the top of your jar. I swept my plastic spatula around the inside to release any air bubbles, wiped the rims, and set the tops and plopped each jar into the waterbath canner to process for 35 minutes.

Because there are so many things to boil for canning peaches, I had to do my processing in phases. I would stop prepping peaches when my bowl got full of fruit and then I would take the blanching water off the stove to put the syrup back on to boil. All the fussing and relocating of pots and bowls made the entire event extremely time consuming for just one person to accomplish, but the assurance of peaches through winter will be well worth the energy.

I canned 3 boxes of peaches the first day, but had 2 boxes left to process so I had to keep going. I froze a bunch of fruit by blanching, peeling, pitting and slicing the peaches, as with the canning, but then placing the slices on a non-stick cookie sheet and popping them in the freezer overnight. (The non-stick pan is vital as the peaches really want to adhere until the pan warms up and it's a bit of a trick getting them off...I used a spatula and a little elbow grease to pry them off and didn't damage the fruit at all) Then, once frozen, you can bag them up or vacuum seal them for use in smoothies or pies.

Speaking of pies, I also made the most delicious peach crisp ever.
Here's the recipe:
Grease an 8 x 8 pan.
Peel and slice about 6 cups of peaches.
Add 1/2 tsp almond extract, 1/4 cup of sugar and 1-2 tbsp quick cooking tapioca (depending on how juicy your peaches are) to fruit and let sit while you prepare topping.

In the Cuisinart, combine until the consistency of cornmeal:
1 cup all-purpose flour, 3/4 cup white sugar, 1/4 cup brown sugar, 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/2 cup butter.

Pour peaches into pan, pour topping over. Bake at 375 degrees for about 45 minutes. As I said, this is the best peach crisp recipe I've ever made, but I doubled this recipe and wouldn't recommend doing that unless you are cooking for an army...it's so sweet and rich that you'll only be able to consume one serving per sitting. Better to make it twice than to make too much the first time.

Finally, with all the peach skins I had accumulated from days of blanching and peeling, I decided to make jelly. I poured the reserved juice from peeling, the lemony juice the peach slices soaked in before being packed in the jars, the peels and all the peach bits and bruised spots I'd pared out of the fruit I'd canned and frozen into a large stockpot and added about 2 quarts of water. I turned the burner on low and simmered it all for 2 to 3 hours until the skins were almost falling apart. Then I pressed everything through a seive. I considered using the jelly bag, but my counter was so messy from all the canning and processing, I just couldn't find the space to set the contraption up, so the sieve it was. I ended up with about 7 cups of very thick, nectar-like juice.

To turn it into jelly, I combined the juice with 2 packets of Sure-Jell fruit pectin, and brought it to a rolling boil on the stove. Once boiling, I added 5 cups of sugar all at once and stirred until the sugar was dissolved. I also added a dash of almond extract to enhance the flavor. Again, I brought it to a rolling boil, stirring constantly and set the timer for 5 minutes, then checked for set. It wasn't quite set so I boiled about 3 minutes more, and then ladled it into hot sterilized jars and processed in the waterbath for 15 minutes. The jelly turned out very sweet, so it was not my favorite, but my kids loved it. Fortunately, as you'll read soon enough, there's no shortage of jelly being made in my house.

Well, that just about covered my 5 boxes of peaches for this year. Just in time too, because the 2 boxes of pears I bought are now ready to process, and the 2 boxes of plums I harvested on Friday are beginning to smell overripe. Oh, and never mind the tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, raspberries, apples and grapes that are all waiting in earnest for their turn for harvest and preservation. More on all of them later!

The Palisade Peach Pilgrimage

I won't lie. I was in desperate need of a couple of days away from the family to rest and return rejuvenated. So when I checked online and found that this weekend was the Palisade Peach Festival on the Western Slope of Colorado, I recruited my good buddy Cathy and we planned a mommies-only road trip to the other side of the mountains.

After an excited, chatty 4 hour drive through the Rocky Mountains, we rolled into the charming town of Palisade, CO to find a historic main street featuring few quaint stores and a lovely art gallery. We picked up a brochure for the fair at a cute boutique and attempted to navigate our way to the peach festival on foot, but Cathy and I are both navigationally impaired (my husband thinks it's related to our shared hair color) and we wound up miles from the fair and ultimately had to take a shuttle to get us back on track. (We did however get an interesting, albeit sweaty tour of parts of downtown Palisade.)

Once at the peach festival, we found it lacked some of the excitement we were expecting from the peach capital of Colorado. At one point, while we munched our overpriced fair food, a voice burst over the loudspeaker to announce that the entry table was in desperate need of $1 and $5 bills, as the Palisade Bank had been robbed that morning and was thus unable to provide them with change. On the bright side, there was a textile arts fair taking place at the same venue that captivated our attention for over an hour, as we got weaving demonstrations and chatted with llama experts about raising fiber animals.

 

We left the festival and began the trek to procure the peaches we would be taking home with us. Once in the growing region, it was clear why this is such a great place for fruit! The trees were gorgeous, the topography unique and compelling, and the climate hot with abundant water. Vineyards and orchards were everywhere and the fruit stands dotted the side of the road, each one urging travelers to stop and try their home-grown goods. We felt compelled to acquiesce.

 

We cruised from stand to stand, chatting with growers, sampling fruit and haggling prices. One stand had a variety of peach called Roza, which was the most delicious peach I've ever tasted with its intensely sweet nectar soft delicate flesh that simply fell off the pit. They are a relatively large peach, and we even came across one that likely weighed over one pound! We decided we'd come back Sunday for our 10 or so boxes of ripe fruit at $15 per box.

After our fruit exploration, we spent the rest of the day getting lost on our way to the hotel. At one point, as we chatted away, enjoying the blissful experience of being able to complete a sentence without a preschooler interrupting us for a potty break, we looked up to notice a sign saying "Leaving Colorful Colorado." Apparently, in our quest to reach Grand Junction where our hotel resided, we'd failed to get off the I-70 highway and wound up in Utah. A quick (illegal) U-turn on the highway got us back on track, but it made me think that maybe my hubby is right about the hair color thing.

On Sunday, we arrived at the first pre-screened peach stand ready to buy our 10 or so boxes of Roza peaches only to discover that the vendor had just 3 boxes left of the $15 a box peaches, but she was glad to sell us the firmer, less ripe boxes for $20 a box. Grrrr.

We hussled up to the other, emergency backup stand, where we had decided to buy our pears to see if they had any of the $18 per box peaches they advertised the day before, and as with the other stand, they were "sold out" but we could buy the "better" boxes (not Rozas) for $25 each. Well, we bought our pears there (pear price was the same as the one quoted the day before) and cruised back to the first stand to pay $20 a box for our favorite flavored fruit.

We loaded up the back of the SUV and headed back over the mountains, happy, satisfied and full of peaches and stories to tell the kids.

All in all, $20 a box for the best peaches in the state isn't a bad deal, nevermind the $80 in gas and $50 for lodging we each spent making the journey. Of course, $130 for a weekend of relaxation, fun, fellowship and a break from parenting was a darned good investment in my personal sanity if you ask me.

We did make a few notes for next time:

1. Buy peaches when the price is right and the inventory is there, and then store them in the hotel room if necessary
2. Don't go to Palisade Peach Festival weekend and expect to haggle for better prices on peaches
3. Buy twice as many boxes as desired and sell them for twice the price at home to offset the fuel and lodging expense