beXnlog

Peach Reductor = Jammer

On Saturday the Peach Crew and i headed over to Highland Orchards in West Chester, PA, for a mega Pick Your Own trip. Our first trip out there was in June for blueberries and black raspberries; be and i picked over 10 lbs of berriness, a quarter of which is still in our freezer for unspecified usage. This 2nd trip was mainly for peaches but we ended up picking blackberries as well.

The peaches were "hail kist" meaning that most were scarred from a recent hailstorm -- the Orchard was offering a $12.50 box you could fill with as many peaches as possible. I'm not really sure how many lbs we picked but the final tally (not including the ripe ones we found and ate) was 131 peaches, ranging from small to large. The 131 was just for be and i! The Rs and the KAs each filled their own boxes as well! Peach overload for sure.

Next we sampled a few blackberries and ended up picking a few lbs of those too. The buses near the ends of the rows were picked over, but if one braved the overgrowth and spiderwebs, the middle of each long row held delicious berries ranging from medium to mega large. be and i picked 3.4 lbs and the others ranged a little higher and lower.

(After fruit picking, we headed into town for lunch at Iron Hill Brewery, chosen for its interesting beer offerings. Note the sampler is much fun.)

So... back at home we first processed a bunch of the ripe peaches, cutting them into chunks. Then we separated the nice looking peaches to give out to friends. Another trayload stayed on the kitchen table to ripen for us to eat, while the majority went into the fridge. Apparently one is supposed to refrigerate peaches and take them out to ripen (in about 1-2 days) as needed.

My usual peach reduction recipe is Peach Crisp from Pillsbury Best Desserts but that really only uses 8-10 per dish. I needed more ways to reduce peaches so i decided to try making jam. Since the blackberries were going bad fastest, i froze half of them and used the rest for blackberry jam. The recipe i used was a pectin-free one from Martha Stewart; i halved the recipe, used only 1.75 cups of sugar and left out the bay leaf. The plate test really works, too! I tested the jam four times before it wrinkled correctly, and now the jam is a nice, spreadable yet firm consistency. I love the faint lemony hint due to the lemon rind. Overall a delicious jam -- so delicious i can't believe it was that easy.

The peach jam recipe search was harder. Most recipes used pectin, were too simplistic or overly complicated. I wasn't going to sterilize jars to preserve the jam on my shelf, nor was i going to shell out $ for a box of pectin when plenty of people have made successful jam in the old skool method. I ended up using the Martha Stewart recipe as a basis and tweaked it from other information online. The jam cooked up nicely although it's a little looser than i would've liked; i plate tested twice and it seemed okay, but perhaps a little more cooking would've made it just right. Regardless, it's the best peach jam i've ever tasted. I'm not even that into jam -- but the last few days have had me eating toast & jam, baguette & jam, crackers & jam, just spoonfuls of jam...

This weekend i'm really tempted to find some small canning jars or jam jars to really try to make JAM, as in, the jars you sterilize and boil until they vacuum seal themselves so you can store them forever on your shelf. We still have a thousand peaches so if it doesn't work out, no big deal. If it does, then everyone's getting homemade jam for the holidays!

be's Peach Jam #1

6 cups peaches*, peeled and chopped
2 cups white sugar
juice of 1/2 lemon

Put two small plates in the freezer to get cold. Use a potato masher and crush up the peaches until it's half mush, half chunks. Add the peaches to a heavy pot with the sugar and lemon juice. Heat on medium high until boiling. Skim off the foam (this will take a few minutes) and boil the jam for 10-12 minutes until it looks syrupy. Take the pot off the heat, drop a spoonful of jam onto one of the cold plates, freeze for 2 minutes and test. If it wrinkles a bit and is not super liquidy anymore, it's done. Otherwise put the pot back on the heat and cook for another 1-2 minutes and repeat the test. Keep repeating this cycle until the jam is the correct consistency. Put the jam into glass jars and keep refrigerated. Use within a few weeks. (This made about 28 oz of jam for me: one 24 oz Classico pasta sauce Mason jar, one 4 oz glass jam jar.)

*Some people online state that slightly underripe fruit makes better jam since it has a naturally higher pectin content.

posted by beXn @ 3:07 PM