My First Canning Experience: Canning Peaches With Honey

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Canning Peaches with Honey is easier then you may think! In this post, I will go through everything you need to know and all the obstacles I faced during my first canning experience.

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This year I really wanted to try canning some fresh summer produce to enjoy through the winter, and to help me pack lunches for my son that I feel are nutritious. Last school year I felt myself sending the same few fruits the whole winter because there aren’t as many options in season during the winter. Eating in season has so many benefits, but my main motivator is that is it is much cheaper to eat produce that is in season because of the abundance at that time. Abundance = lower prices! When I saw peaches for 39 cents a piece, I HAD to bite the bullet and give it a try, so my husband and I went to Target and purchased the necessary equipment… and then I procrastinated!

Equipment I Used

As with anything I’m skeptical about, I waited. I waited, and waited, and waited. The peaches weren’t going anywhere, and they weren’t going bad either. I was scared! What If I screwed this up and wasted all of these beautiful peaches? A friend at church who has been in a canning frenzy lately told me this: it isn’t hard, it is just a process.

Being completely unfamiliar with the process, I was intimidated to say the least. I got a canning book and I read up about everything on the internet but every source explained things in a different way. Did I need to sterilize the jars? How much water did I need to put in the water bath? Would I be able to do this WITHOUT cups upon cups of sugar, as suggested by Ball? These are a few of the questions I had, but I worked my way through the process and guess what? It wasn’t as complicated as it sounds!

My Obstacles

Let me just throw this out there, I have a SMALL kitchen, and by small I mean galley style in an apartment with about a square foot of working space. If you have more space (you almost have to) then this process will be a lot easier for you. I guess my biggest obstacle was space and timing, but that is essentially why I’m writing this. A lot of the directions tell you what you need to do but don’t necessarily say do all of these steps at the same time then go on to these steps at the same time.

My other obstacle was the amount of sugar that my Ball canning book suggested using. I just don’t understand the concept behind taking fresh produce and dumping mass amounts of refined sugar on it, so I did not follow Ball’s suggestion for the syrup. Even their honey based syrup was equal parts honey to water. I’m not judging here, don’t get me wrong. If you’ve canned with refined sugars and you are fine with that, then awesome! What works for you, works for you. But for me, I would never purchase sugar laden fruit cups at the grocery store so I sure won’t be canning sugar laden fruits at home.

Ball suggests using 20% sugar for their “extra-light syrup” which equals 5 1/2 cups of sugar and 6 cups of water. WHOA! Basically this is equal parts sugar to water, and this is the “extra-light”. Stated above the syrups chart, it says that you CAN can whole, halved, or sliced fruits in water. This let me know the sugar isn’t essential. I read a few times on various canning sites that sugar helps with browning so maybe that is why people use so much sugar. I was willing to take the chance that I might have a slight color change over using refined sugar. My solution was that I was just going to mix up my own syrup to taste using raw honey and water. I ended up using about a Tablespoon of honey per cup of water. To me this was actually pretty sweet. In comparison to Ball’s ratio, mine would be 1/4 cup + 2 Tablespoons honey to 6 cups of water. Ball’s suggestion for their honey syrup still contains a full cup of refined sugar + a cup of honey per 4 cups of water. To me this is still a ton of sugar even if you are substituting some of the refined sugar for honey! Overall, my syrup tasted just sweet enough for me and so far I haven’t had a ton of color change.

To recap, the solution I used and I’m suggesting is 1/4 cup + 2 Tablespoons of honey to 6 cups of water. I used about a cup of syrup per jar, so this would have given me about 6 pint jars filled with about 10 peaches

The Steps I Used

As I mentioned before timing is essential. Somehow I timed everything perfectly but it kind of just happened that way. You will need all four burners of your stove to do this. I’m suggesting to get everything hot ahead of time so when your peaches are ready you can go, go, go!

1. Start your syrup: Place your water and your honey in a pot and bring it to a simmer. Keep it hot, because you need hot syrup to pour over your peaches.
2. Start your lids: Place your lids in a small saucepan and bring them to a simmer. Your lids also need to be hot when you put them on your cans. Having them already hot is a good idea because then you don’t even have to think about it later. Yes, you are doing this kind of early but it is better to have everything ready to go.
3. Get your cans hot: You can do this by putting the water in your canning pot and using the rack with your cans upside down. The steam from the boiling water should make your cans hot, and sterilize them at the same time. You can leave the water boiling so your cans stay hot until you are ready to use them. It will take some time to get your water boiling, so this is why I’m suggesting to do this ahead of time.
4. Peel your peaches: Bring a pot of water to a boil and submerge your peaches into the water. While your peaches are in the water, take a large colander and place it in the sink. Also take a large cutting board and get it ready to use. After about a minute take one peach out of the boiling water and run it under cold water. This is a test to make sure your peaches are ready to be peeled. If you take your thumb and try to push the skin to remove it and it moves, then they are ready and you can drain them and peel the rest. If not, return it back to the water and give them another 30 seconds to a minute. Your peaches should peel easily unless they are under ripe. Once you run them under cold water the skin should slide off with some help from you.
5. Pit and slice your peaches: Cut along the “buttcrack” of the peach and it should separate perfectly with a little pressure. If it doesn’t separate, this might indicate that your peaches are not completely ripe, which isn’t a good thing if you are canning them. The center should be nice and red as well. You can slice your peaches or keep them in halves. I chose to slice mine.
6. Fill your jars: At this point, everything will be set up perfectly for you to fill your jars with ease. Place your peaches in your jar leaving 1/2 inch headspace (according to Ball). Ladle hot syrup over peaches, again leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Remove any air bubbles using the rubber spatula tool included in your canning kit. Place hot lid on top of can using the magnetic lid grabber from your canning kit, and seal lid with hot ring. Set aside until you fill all of your jars, making sure each lid is on tightly.
7. Process your jars: This is the easy part! You’ve set everything up, now you get to let some boiling water in your canning pot finish the job. Move your rack down to the bottom of your canning pot and make sure your jars are submerged at least 2/3 of the way up with water. Your jars should never touch the bottom of the pot. You may have to add additional water to your canning pot and that is fine. I had to, and I used a liquid measuring cup to add the additional water. Before you start your processing time your water has to be boiling! Bring your water to a boil then start your time and place the lid on your canning pot.
8. Remove your jars and wait: After your processing time (25 minutes for pints, 30 minutes for quarts according to Ball) remove your jars with the hot jar handler from your canning kit and set them to cool on a kitchen towel. This is the part that takes some patience, because of course you want to know if your jars sealed correctly right away. It does take quite some time for the jars to cool completely so leave them alone and walk away!

How to Tell if Your Jars Sealed Correctly

This was the big question for me, did I do it correctly? Obviously, I had no idea of knowing how to tell if my jars were sealed correctly so I stumbled upon the website PickYourOwn.Org that had all of the information I needed to know. According to Pick Your Own here is How to Tell if Your Jars Are Sealed Correctly:

• Your lid should not be able to spring back up at your when you press on the center. I knew my jars were sealed because the center was firm. I could not have moved it!
• Lid should make a ringing sound when tapped with a metal spoon. If you tap your lid with a spoon and it sounds dull, your jars are not sealed correctly.
• At eye level the middle of your lid should be curved down slightly. If your lid is flat or bulging in any way, your jar could possibly be unsealed.

There is a ton of other great information on Pick Your Own of what to do if your jars aren’t sealed, so check that out!

My Closing Thoughts

I thought it was going to be really hard.. heck I even procrastinated quite a bit. I might have never even done the canning had I not kept thinking my husband would be so mad at me if I wasted all of those peaches!! But after I was finished I realized I was my own worst enemy because IT WAS SO EASY! The most important part is really setting everything up ahead of time and making sure you have everything hot and ready to go. One of the first thing I learned in Pastry School were the words Mise en Place, which just means “Everything in It’s Place” and that is exactly what I recommend. Get everything in it’s place, then start. If you don’t have everything in it’s place, you will be thinking AHHHHH I don’t have the lids or AHHHH my jars aren’t ready. Again, I am NO expert, heck I wasn’t even planning on talking about these peaches here, but I thought why not? There are plenty of mom’s out there thinking canning is hard and I know now that it is super duper easy. The only thing I might have done different was I would have tried to put more peaches in each jar. After the fact it looked like I could have fit more, and I could have filled the jars a little bit more. I might have been over concerned with the 1/2 inch headspace, but hey… I sealed the jars and I’m happy about that.

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