Preserving Peaches

I bought 10kg of peaches on special at the supermarket yesterday and decided to bottle them.  They were mainly white peaches with a few yellow peaches amongst them.  I had read many articles that state that you should peel your peaches prior to preserving them.  Then I found one that said that this is not strictly necessary, only preferred by some due to the fluffiness that can form on peach skins.  These particular peaches had a relatively smooth skin with only a little bit of fur which I rubbed off when I washed them in a sink of fresh water.

After washing, I cut the peaches in half, and then removed the stones.  Fortunately none were clingstone variety so the stone twisted out very easily.  I cut about 2/3 of the peaches into quarters, leaving the rest in halves.  As soon as I had cut them I put them in another sink of fresh water, this one including several teaspoons of sodium ascorbate powder to stop the peaches going brown.

I packed the peaches in bottles, putting in a few at a time, then adding a bit of water then filling the jar up to about 1 cm from the top of the jar ensuring that the water completely covered the fruit.  

Using Ball Mason wide mouth quart jars I could fit about 7 or 8 complete peaches in the bottle (cut in halves or quarters and minus their stone by now of course!).  Once the jars were filled and sealed I put 7 into my Ozfarmer preserver starting with cold water and heated it to 90 degrees and processed the bottles for 30 minutes starting from when the temperature hit 90 degrees.  While the first lot were processing I finished putting the other half into bottles, another batch of 7 quarts.  Rather than empty out the water and start with a fresh lot of cold water, I put the fresh bottles in a sink of hot water to warm up while the first batch processed.  This way, once I had removed the first lot of bottles, I could put the second lot into the still warm water without shocking the glass with a sudden change of temperature, which can lead to breakage.

Voila.  14 quarts of peaches done.  As the peaches are already sweet, I didn't add any extra honey or sweetener to the jars but if i had wanted to I could have made up a sugar syrup.  As it was I had half a dozen peaches left over at the end which I didn't bottle as I didnt want to run the preserver for just 2 more bottles.  Instead I made up a sugar syrup and pouched the peach halves in that and we will have them with homemade yoghurt and some mixed fruit as a tasty dessert!