Smashed BBQ Peach Jam

When life hands you smashed up peaches and all your burners are in use for canning, its time to make Peach - vanilla - honey jam on the BBQ.

As mentioned in last week's post about our peach canning odyssey, I am never ever peeling another peach.

All pealing peaches does is take perfect lovely wonderful peaches like these...

 and waste your time blanching, plunging...

 peeling... 

only to end up having them go to total smashed up mush when you go to cut them.

It was so terribly sad that I'll show you this lovely picture of pre-smashed peeled peaches as I did not take one of the carnage.

I do pretty much all of our cooking out on the deck in the warmer months.  Our kitchen is small and the deck has much better light.  It also has the Barbecue.

Which is nice when you have a bunch of rapidly browning peaches, a full freezer, and no free burner on the stove as you are in the middle of canning a @#&*^@#! bushel of peaches.

The main danger of bbqed jam is that the wasps go crazy. As you can see I left the peaches pretty chunky.

Peaches are pretty high in pectin and set into jam quite nicely without adding very much extra sugar.  Almost all  fruit is also considered high acid so you don't need to be all that careful with your recipe like some other things (like tomatoes, or green beans).  

I simply added a little lemon juice to prevent browning and keep that acid level high, a teaspoon of vanilla, a cup of honey and a cup of organic white sugar, which was really an accident as I forgot we still had some of this wonderful honey. The ratio was around 25% sugar/honey and 75% fruit.  

I had been taught that jam needed to be 40% sugar-60% fruit but recently found out from a canning class at the local Mennonite Church that wasn't true.  As long as it's high acid fruit and there's enough naturally occurring pectin, the amount of sugar is purely dependant on taste.

Volia! A near disaster prevented! Delicious jam, slow cooked outside for the neighbours to smell. 

Some final notes: It took about an hour to set, then I jared it up and put in the already going waterbath for ten minutes.

Recipe: August in a Jar

After a last minute cottage visit with lots of berry picking, we returned home and made some jam so we could enjoy the last days of summer all winter long.  Using my grandmother’s Joy of Cooking for guidance we developed “August in a jar”.

Some important notes: 

-This jam contains 60% fruit and 40% sugar. This is a rather low sugar ratio so we are storing the jars in the fridge just to be safe.

-Apples naturally contain high levels of pectin and can be used in place of the little packages.  They are also nice and acidic.

-Jam is not just for toast but delicious on waffles and ice cream.  It also makes a great thank you gift to the kind people who let you use their cottage and pick all their berries.

- Last but not least always, always, always follow safe canning practices: This link about making jam without added pectin and this one from freshpreserving.com are great resources and will help if you’re unsure.

2 cups blackberries

4 cups of wild blueberries

2 cups of chopped up, skinned, peaches

3 peeled and cored granny smith apples

6 cups of sugar

Pick some berries and then take their picture:

Peel peaches by running under hot tap water, chop up into 1 inch pieces.  Wash berries and remove any leaves and sticks.

Crush a few berries with your (clean) hands and combine with peaches and sugar in a good pot with a thick bottom.  Pass a few berries to the baby so she will let you make jam in peace.  These are not high pectin fruits so add the peeled, cored and finely chopped apples.

Stir and cook over low heat until the sugar is dissolved.  Turn up the heat and simmer and stir frequently to keep jam from sticking.  After about 20 minutes, start testing to see if jam will set.  Take about a teaspoon worth and place on a saucer in the fridge for a minute of two.  Jam should gel or “stay in place” after being cooled.  It took us about 40 minutes but we like really thick jam and it was a quite a humid day.

Pack while hot into hot sterilized jars, close lids finger tight and then boil full jars for 5 minutes.

Cool and Enjoy! Feel free to eat the leftovers straight out of the pot with a spoon and a baby.