Problem: No room in the freezer. Plus, freezers are sort of dependent on a power supply. Our power supply is vulnerable to storms and such, so I thought it would be a good idea to can this bushel of peaches in jars. That way, we'd know we'd have them in a power outage. Unless the outage is caused by an earthquake, which might tumble them off shelves and break them. I decided not to think about that.
Hey, I'm all about denial.
It only took a couple of hours for three of us to peel and cut them in half and stuff them in the jars. We decided to can them in water and not add the extra sugar in a syrup. Rumor has it that the syrup makes for really attractive canned peaches, but these are for food, not the county fair.
We made a solution of ascorbic acid and citric acid to put on them to keep them from browning and that's the water that we filled the jars with. Here's how we made the anti-browning solution.
Anti-Browning Solution for canned fruit
www.rurification.com
6 tablets vitamin C, crushed
1 tsp citric acid
1 gallon hot water
Crush vitamin tablets with the back of a spoon. Mix vitamin C and citric acid in the water. Fill jars with peaches. Ladle solution over peaches. Cap and process.
We processed the peaches for 30 minutes in a boiling water canner.
We got 25 quarts of peaches from the bushel. One jar broke in the canner [and can I just say that I HATE that? Seriously! They're Designed To Handle Boiling Water. Hello! Brand new wide mouth jar, too. Gee, thanks, Ball.]
It takes a LOT longer to actually process the jars for canning than it did to fill the jars with the peaches and get them ready. Be patient. Plan on having something else to do close by while you're keeping an eye on things.
Where to get citric acid? We got ours at Freedom Country Store just north of Worthington on Hwy 231. You might be able to find some at your local drug store, Walmart, etc.