Oh yeah.. How I remember growing up with an abundance of sweet ripe juicy peaches during our Georgia summers… in particular the fresh peach ice cream, hand-cranked of course, was a taste I’ll never forget. But I’ll save that for another post.
Now one of my all-time favorites is peach preserves or peach jam depending on how much you crush your peaches. So today I thought I’d show you the “fruits” of my recent labor…my process of making peach preserves. If you have some nice chewy bread in the house, or better yet if you’ve made my sourdough bread from an earlier post, you will definitely want to put these preserves on top of a hot crispy piece of it. Double Yumm!
First let me stress the importance of having all your tools out and ready for use. Mise en place is a French phrase which means “putting in place”, as in set up. For canning in particular this is definitely necessary because in this case you’re going to be working with hot sugared jam and when it’s ready to be canned, you need to work efficiently and methodically. You can’t over or under-cook jam or else it won’t gel properly. Things will need your attention quickly and you’ll want to have your tools, food etc. within arms reach. So take the time to get everything set up before you start.
Here I’ve laid out all my tools, pots, jars, lids, everything I’m going to need, so these pictures are like reference lists for me for future canning projects.
Deep pots for water bath method of processing, along with helpful jar lifter, magnetized lid retriever and a wand that measures the head space. (All these can be gotten in a Ball canning accessory kit)
Mixing bowls, jam pot, thermometer, funnel, spatula, spoons, paring knife, potato masher.
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