Canning Vanilla Peach Jam Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Is it safe to can white peach jam? ›

Pour hot jam into jars, leaving ¼-inch headspace. Wipe jar rims and adjust lids. Process in a boiling water canner, following manufacturer's instructions. The recommended process time for peach jam in a boiling water canner is 5 minutes for half-pint or pint jars.

It will last several weeks in the fridge, but can be frozen for up to three months. Obviously you can use the jam anywhere you like jam — on toast, in peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, or on fresh biscuits.

Tips For Canning Peaches

Add a little lemon juice to each jar before adding the peaches to ensure you reach safe ph acidity levels for canning. Halved peaches take up for space in the jars than sliced. If you are planning on halving your peaches you may need to use more jars.

White peaches don't have as much acidity making it difficult to preserve and cling peaches stick to the pit making them very difficult to separate so you'll likely lose a lot of good peach flesh in the process of trying to remove the pit.

As long as the seal is sound, jams can be stored in a dark, room temperature place for 12 to 18 months. But that's just a “best by” guideline, clarifies Harris: “If the seal is good, there is no visible mold, and the jam looks, smells, and tastes fine it should be OK to eat much beyond that time frame,” she wrote.

A: For best quality, it is recommended that all home-canned foods be used within a year. Most homemade jams and jellies that use a tested recipe, and have been processed in a canner for the recommended time, should retain best quality and flavor for up to that one year recommended time.

Regardless of the type of jam or jelly you have on hand, it's important to know the signs of spoilage. According to Lee, this may include yeasty off-odors, fermented alcohol-like flavors, and mold growth, which may appear as white fuzzy patches inside the jar or on the product itself.

With a simple lemon juice trick, your homemade jam will achieve your desired thick texture. Preparing jam is about capturing the sweet essence of the fruit while simultaneously cooking it down to the perfect syrupy consistency.

You don't have to, but proceed carefully. "If you are really anti-pectin, you can omit it, but you'll need to cook the jam longer. Doing so will remove most of the water content in order to get it to set up properly and in turn, will result in a smaller yield," adds Wynne.

Almost all fruit contains some acid, but the natural amount of acid can differ between fruit types, and even from batch to batch of the same type of fruit. To ensure that my jam has a proper acid level to gel properly and limit bacteria growth, I always add lemon juice to a jam mixture.

Why are my canned peaches mushy? ›

It is thought that softening of high acid fruit occurred primarily during the cook- ing and cooling process as a result of acid hydrolysis of cell wall constituents. Variability in acidity of different halves within a can could account for some halves softening and others not.

If your recipe called for lemon juice and you forgot to put it in, your mixture will not be acid enough for safe canning. You have to open the jars and put the mixture into a sauce pan.

CAUTION: Do not can white-flesh peaches.

The natural pH of some white peaches can exceed 4.6, making them a low-acid food for canning purposes. Currently, there is no low-acid pressure process available for white-flesh peaches nor a researched acidification procedure for safe boiling water canning.

To prevent darkening, keep peeled peaches in ascorbic acid solution (1 teaspoon or 3000 milligrams ascorbic acid or vitamin C per gallon of water), or use a commercial ascorbic acid mixture according to directions on package. Drain when ready to process.

Only yellow fleshed peaches can be safely canned. White peaches are lower in acidity than yellow peaches. Currently there is not a tested procedure for canning white fleshed peaches; freeze them instead.

Usually that thin, white film is jelled foam. If your fruit was foamy in the sauce pan and you didn't skim the foam off, or if your mixture had a lot of air in it and you didn't do air releasing before putting the jam in the jars, the foam or tiny air bubbles rise to the top of the jar and form that white film.

Raw Pack For Canning Peaches

Raw packing simply means placing the peeled peaches in the jars without pre-cooking them, filling the jars with hot syrup, and processing them in the canner. If you are canning your peaches without additional added sugar (sugar, honey, fruit juice), you must hot pack the fruit.

As long as the can is in good shape, the contents should be safe to eat, although the taste, texture and nutritional value of the food can diminish over time. Home canned foods should be used within 1 year.