Country Peach Preserves (2024)

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My mom makes the most amazing fruit preserves. We enjoy her garden fruit all year long this way. This peach preserves recipe takes a couple days; a longer process than most of the peach preserve recipes I’ve seen online but its worth the wait. It’s not watery like most of the recipes that rush the process.

This isn’t speed dating. You’ll get to know your peaches over a couple days and and be rewarded with some mighty fine preserves. If you are thinking about Christmas already (as I am), you can make preserves now, slap a label on in December and give them away as gifts to neighbors, co-workers, nursing directors (wink, wink) – I guess this means I can’t eat all of them myself.

Ingredients for Peach Preserves:

11 lbs peaches, rinsed
4 cups white sugar
Juice of 1 medium lemon

What you will need:

• 5-6 pint-sized jars with lids. I purchased them at Walmart.
• Large Stock Pot (20Qt+) withRack(orpurchase a canner)
• Jar lifterto safely transfer the jars

How to Make Peach Preserves / Peach Jam:

To blanch the peaches:

1. Fill 2/3 of a large soup pot with water. Bring to a boil. Add peaches for 30 -45 seconds, then remove with slotted spoon or this OXO strainer which I used to transfer them in and out of the boiling water and drain the pot. Remove peaches immediately to a large bowl of cold water. This process is known as blanching the peaches and makes removal of the fuzzy skins really easy.

2. Peel the skin (most of them peeled easily by hand, but there were a stubborn few that required a knife), cut the peaches into quarters and remove pits.

Cooking the Preserves:

1. Place all peeled peaches in a large soup pot and squeeze in juice of 1 lemon. Drizzle well with 2 cups sugar, toss and drizzle again with the remaining 1.5-2 cups so the sugar reaches all the peaches. Here’s where you need to use your judgement.

If your peaches are very sweet, you may only need 3 1/2 cups of sugar total. You can add more sugar to taste while its cooking, so don’t panic at this step. You’ll do great!

2. Let peaches sit at room temp with the sugar for about 30min -1 hour, or until sugar is dissolved.

3. Place the pot over the stoveuncovered and bring to a light boil, stirring to prevent scorching. Make sure if you see a light boil to stir because the whole pot may not be boiling, just the center. If it stops boiling after you stir it, continue boiling.

Once the whole pot is at a light boil, simmer for 10 minutes and turn off the heat. Let the pot stand uncovered until it is just warm to the touch or reaches room temp.

4. As soon as it cools, repeat step 3. You will bring it to a light boil a total of 5 times. This is why it takes 2 days to make. It’s really easy though. Definitely not rocket science to bring a pot to a boil and give it a few stirs :D.

You can go to work and come home then return it to a boil; there’s no “set” time that you need to be reboiling it. If 2 days doesn’t work for you, by all means, take 3 days. Preserves have plenty of sugar so they won’t spoil at room temp if you leave it on the counter overnight. If you want the preserves to have an even thicker consistency, you can boil it 6 times if you wish.

(Note: the fifth time you boil, bring it to a boil over a little lower heat and stir a few extra times to prevent scorching. Also, it thickens more as it cools.)

5. The last time you bring it to a boil you will want to transfer it to sterilized jars while it’s boiling hot.

To sterilize the jars:

1. To sterilize your clean jars:wash them and let them dry in the oven at 215 for about 20 min or until completely dry. Boil the lids 5 min.

2.Transfer your boiling hot preserves to the jars using a glass measuring cup and a funnel (least messy method) leaving about 1/2″ space.

3. Screw the lids on enough to keep a tight seal in place but don’t over-tighten them since air bubbles need to be able to escape.

4. Place packed cans into the canning pot and cover with 1-2 inches of water. Bring to a boil and process 15 minutes. Remove from the pot with jar lifter and leave at room temperature undisturbed for 12-24 hours. You may hear a pop when the jars fully seal. After 24 hours, check that the seal has formed by pushing down on the center of the lid – it should not move at all. If the seal does not form, refrigerate preserves and enjoy within 3 months.

Tada!! You’ll make it and think “hey that wasn’t so bad.” Well, that’s what I thought the first time I made them.

Current Canning Guidelines:

Recipe updated in 2019 to reflect new canning standards. Previously we used the oven method.You can get up to date on the most recent canning guidelines here. It’s a great resource to answer frequently asked canning questions.

Signs of Spoiled Canned Food:

With any type of canning, we follow this advice: “When in doubt, throw it out”
Discard and do not eat or taste any canned food if you notice any of the following:

• the jar is leaking, bulging, or swollen
• the jar looks damaged, cracked, or abnormal
• the jar spurts foam or liquid upon opening
• the canned food is discolored, moldy, mushy, slimy, or smells bad