Peach Chutney

When I have an abundance of something hanging around the house waiting to be 'done with' so we can eat it through the winter, I get brave.

I cook things that normally I wouldn't cook for fear I'd screw it up. Or that no one would like it. Or something like that.

But when you have a million peaches sitting around, you get desperate for something interesting to do with them. Let's face it, you can only eat so much peach jam before it gets to be no fun anymore.

Over at  Food in Jars, I heard about a book by Stephen Palmer Dowdney called Putting Up.  Though the Amazon reviews were mixed, I thought it was worth a look see at the library and I was glad to see they had it when I looked.

It's full of interesting recipes!  I looked for recipes for peaches and sure enough, he had a recipe for Peach Chutney that sounded very good and very doable.

I revised the recipe some to fit my needs.   He makes LARGE quantities and measures in pounds.   I wanted a few jars and I don't have a kitchen scale.    I used measuring cups.  Also, I needed to dial down the spicy heat.   Quite a bit.

It worked fine.  I can't wait to throw a jar of this in the slow cooker with a pork roast. [UPDATE:  We did throw a pint of this in the slow cooker with a pork roast and it was fabulous!  Brown the roast first.   Put it in the pot, pour the chutney over it.  Cook on low until it falls apart.]

Here's the recipe.

Peach Chutney

• 8 Cups peach pieces
• 2 T mustard seeds
• 1 tsp - T red pepper flakes
• 3 Cups sugar
• 1/2 Cup white wine vinegar [I used my own homemade white wine vinegar and it was fabu!]
• 1/4 Cup crystallized ginger, chopped up [That's a handful of ginger pieces, if you don't want to cram it into a cup measure.]
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 3/4 Cup raisins [I like golden raisins in this.]

Combine ingredients and cook down.   When the temp gets above 212 degrees, it's done.  Or you can skip the temp watching and cook it until enough liquid boils off that you can drag a spoon across the bottom of the pan and it leaves a dry place for a second before the juices flow again.   I cooked my first batch long because I got busy with something else and it cooked down a bunch.  I got three pints out of it.   I cooked my second batch shorter and watched the temp.   I stopped at 212 degrees, but it was much wetter than a chutney usually is.   I didn't care.   I canned it wet anyway.   I got just over three pints.

For more jam recipes as easy as these, check out my ebook on the sidebar.  A Simple Jar of Jam: 180+ recipes & variations for jam using low sugar pectin.  Every purchase goes a long way toward supporting the blog.   Thank you!