Peach Butter

One of the ways to deal with a rush of peaches is to make peach butter.  I have only done this a couple of summers, when I had a gross surplus.  Peach butter yields about half as much finished product (in terms of volume) as making peach preserves.  According to my records, I got about 4.5 pints out of 10 lb. of unprocessed peaches (the half pints I just put in the refrigerator and used right away).  I did several batches the one summer I got over 100 lb. off my trees (as well as dried some, made preservers with some, canned some sliced, froze some for pies, pickled some... it was a good problem to have).

With canning I'm not innovative--I just follow recipes out there from trusted sources, such as the Ball Blue Book (BBB), the National Center for Home Food Preservation (NCHFP):

National Center for Home Food Preservation

Or PickYourOwn.org,

Pickyourown.org

The latter mostly replicates the NCHFP, but has a few additional recipes.  The BBB does not list cinnamon, while PickYourOwn does.  I've made it both ways (though I haven't used the other spices mentioned); each recipe has strengths. One friend specifically requested no cinnamon because that's the way her mother made it.  I use less than amount of sugar indicated in the BBB, which calls for 1 cup per pound of peaches (vs. almost 2 cups per pound with peach preserves, so peach butter has about half as much sugar). I only use about 4 cups of sugar for the 10 lb. load.  Note, however, that my yield of finished product is much lower.  According to the BBB, my 10 lb. of peaches should have yielded about 9-10 pints.  That just hasn't happened for me any of the times I have made it.  Maybe I cook it down too much.  I like my finished product nonetheless. When I add cinnamon, I add up to 1/2 tablespoon per cup of sugar--in other words, maybe 4 tablespoons for a full batch.  This is the ratio in the PickYourOwn recipe.  One more thing about the sugar:  I have usually used mostly Belle of Georgia peaches for the butter, and it's a very sweet peach.  That might matter.

The first step in the BBB is to wash, blanch, peel, and pit the peaches.  I detest peeling peaches, so avoid that step.  I simply cut them into pieces, pit them, and toss them straight into the food mill (as it turns out, the one picture I have of this process was mostly the yellow cling peaches, not Belle of Georgia).






If the peaches are fully ripe and soft, you can mill them raw...it takes a little bit of work, but is not bad. Then again, in my laziness maybe I'm creating extra work for myself.  Also, maybe a lot of fruit sticks to the skins (which don't mill) and that's part of why I get a lower yield.  At any rate, it works for me.  The stuff that drains out of the food mill will be peach slurry with a thin consistency.  I fill the crock pot (10 lb. comes close to doing that) and heat it on medium initially, then drop it to low for a while--overnight. I add the sugar and cinnamon (if used) once it's in the pot.

I cook it down until I like the consistency.  Generally it takes about 18 hours.  As you can see, I've adopted the butter knife trick mentioned on the PickYourOwn page to hold the lid off the rim of the pot so the water can evaporate.

Eventually, the flavor seems to deteriorate a little and it heads towards having a scorched taste.  So one can only push it so far.  My peach butter is fairly thin as a finished product, but refrigerating it makes it thick enough (comparable to apple butter you might buy in the store).

Once it cooks down to the right consistency, simply ladle it into the jars and process in a boiling water bath canner for about 10 minutes (15 min where I live, over 1000' elevation in the Piedmont).

Note that the BBB does not call for added lemon juice to boost the acidity, as is indicated for the more-heavily sugared preserves (I assume the lemon juice is needed for the latter because all of the sugar raises the pH of the peaches to the point that they can't be canned in boiling water).

Last year my peach harvest was down so I just did preserves.  Since I will be buying any peaches I do anything with this year--due to the late freeze--I might make more peach butter.

I've given jars of this to a number of people and all have complimented it--meaning they are either very polite or it's reasonably good.