How to make peach jam?
On the territory of Russia, peach does not grow everywhere, but only in the southern regions, where nature has created the most ideal conditions for it. Therefore, peach jam for residents of the central zone of the Russian Federation is a rather exotic dish, while in the Krasnodar Territory it is an ordinary product that is often prepared by residents of the warm regions of the Black Sea coast.
Selection and preparation of ingredients
The choice of fruit quality directly depends on what kind of dessert will be prepared. If jam is supposed to be cooked, then juicy ripe fruits are suitable for it. They can be easily mashed up and will quickly release all the juice. It is also easier to remove the peel from ripe fruits, which should not be present in such a dessert.
For the classic version of jam, dense and slightly unripe fruits are suitable. They perfectly retain their shape also due to the peel, which is most often not removed from peaches, leaving the fruit unchanged.
If it is planned to perform not a one-component dessert, but a variant of two or three fruits, then it is worth knowing in advance about the mutually beneficial combination of tastes when the fruits do not interrupt each other's aromas.
In a variety of fruits and berries, the following successful combinations are distinguished:
- peach goes well with apricots: they do not overlap each other, and after tasting such a dessert, you can feel the taste of both peach and apricot;
- peach and apple - a classic combination of fruits: such a versatile fruit as an apple will add something new to the taste of a peach dessert;
- raspberries add original sourness to peach jam;
- peach goes well with a slightly bland pear: together they make an excellent fruity duet.
Combinations with lemon and cherry will be unsuccessful for a peach: such bright-tasting fruits will kill the main component, and it will not even be able to compete with active lemon and cherry notes.
Classic Recipes
"Universal"
In winter, it is always nice to open a jar of your favorite peach jam for tea and freshly baked pancakes. It is doubly pleasant when this dessert is prepared with your own hands. Such a product can also be used for pie fillings and added to cottage cheese dishes.
The classic recipe for jam from these delicious fruits is as follows:
- processed and chopped peaches - 2 kg;
- granulated sugar - 1 kg;
- citric acid - 5 gr.
To prepare such a jam, slightly unripe fruits are needed, since jam with pieces will not work from ripe peaches: they will boil and turn the dessert into ordinary jam.
After thoroughly washing the fruits, they are cut into slices, sent to a deep saucepan and covered with sugar. Leave them like this for 10-12 hours. Then the pot with peaches and the extracted juice is put on the stove until it boils. When cooking jam, do not cover the boiling mass with a lid.
After boiling, the mixture is boiled for 3 minutes and the stove is turned off, then waiting for the pan to cool completely. After cooling, the boiling procedure is repeated a second time. After the second cooling, the pan is put on fire 3 times, adding citric acid to the jam.After boiling the dessert for the last time for 5 minutes, the stove is turned off and the prepared delicacy is poured into pre-sterilized jars. They are closed with a locking key. After cooling, the jars can be stored in the basement or pantry.
It is permissible to add lemon juice to such a dessert, but you should know that the lemon strongly emphasizes the taste of peaches, which can go by the wayside in this case. By adding lemon juice, it is necessary to increase the amount of granulated sugar.
"Mystery"
The mysterious pear will not immediately reveal itself in this dessert, so not every guest will correctly guess the second component of this delicacy.
The jam has the following ingredients:
- pear - 500 gr;
- peaches - 500 gr;
- granulated sugar - 800 gr.
Fruits are well washed and peeled. After cutting them into slices and pitting them, they are placed in a large bowl and sprinkled with sugar until juice is formed (60 minutes). Then the container with fruit is placed on the stove and boiled, gently stirring the mixture, preventing the pieces from falling apart prematurely. After the dessert has thickened, it is packed in jars, which must be sterilized in advance.
From whole peaches
If the peaches were bought medium-sized, and the bones are not separated from them well, then you can step by step prepare an incredibly tasty and fragrant jam from whole peaches with a stone. This is an unusual recipe for jam, where the fruit remains in the form in which nature itself created it.
Ingredients:
- whole fruits - 1 kg;
- soda - 10 gr;
- water - the volume is indicated in the recipe;
- granulated sugar - 1.4 kg.
Soda in this recipe is not used in the cooking process, but is only needed for soaking fruits in its solution. This procedure is performed before making jam from whole fruits to compact the thin peel of peaches.
Cooking:
- wash the peaches thoroughly;
- pour the fruit into a saucepan and pour such an amount of water into it that only the tops of the fruit protrude above its surface;
- pour the resulting volume of water into a container for cooking jam, put on the stove, pouring sugar and stirring the syrup periodically so that the sugar does not burn;
- pierce the skin of fruits in one place and put them one by one in boiling syrup;
- after boiling the peaches, you need to cook them for no more than 5 minutes;
- as soon as the skin of the fruit becomes transparent and the bones become visible, the jam is turned off and the finished dessert is carefully distributed in sterilized jars, after which it is removed for the winter.
"Five Minute"
For those who are not satisfied with the long process of cooking jam, there is a quick option for cooking this dessert. True, along with a minimum amount of time, it also requires a high-quality selection of fruits. They should not be overripe, nor can they be underripe. They should not have deep dents or other skin lesions.
Before cooking, fruits should be washed well, all stalks removed and cut into slices, while removing the seeds. Some housewives leave them, citing the fact that jam is more fragrant with seeds. The peel from the fruit is also removed at the discretion of the hostess. If it is important for her that the dessert contains slices as they were before cooking, then the peel should be left. In addition, there are a lot of vitamins in it, which remain unchanged in 5 minutes due to the short cooking time of the product.
To prepare the Five Minutes, you will need the following ingredients:
- granulated sugar - 1.5 kg;
- water - 250 gr;
- prepared fruit slices - 1 kg.
To prepare the dessert, you will need a deep large bowl, which you can then put on the stove and cook the dessert in it. The cut is laid out in it, the fruits are covered with sugar and the mixture is left for 30 minutes until peach juice is released. Then the bowl is put on the stove, stirred again, water is added and boiled until boiling over low heat. After the appearance of bubbling in the bowl, the dessert is cooked for exactly 5 minutes.
After turning off the stove, pour the jam into pre-prepared sterile jars and leave to cool. Such a delicacy is stored in the refrigerator for no longer than 3 months.
"Five minutes" can be performed without adding water. To do this, having covered the peaches with sugar, leave them for the appearance of juice not for 20-30 minutes, but for 4 hours. Only after that they put the container on the stove, and then after a five-minute boil, the composition is removed from the heat and put away for storage in jars.
Without sterilization
The recipe for peach treats without sterilization provides for a minimum amount of fruit cooking and no water.
Ingredients:
- peaches - 1 kg;
- granulated sugar - 1.2 kg.
The amount of sugar can be increased or decreased depending on the sweetness of the fruit.
Before the cooking procedure, the peaches are dipped in boiling water for 10 seconds, and then poured over with cool water. The peel is removed, and the fruit is cut into slices or, if the fruit is small, they are cut in half.
After that, the fruits are covered with sugar and wait for the fruit syrup to appear. As soon as the peaches let the juice go, put the pan with them and the resulting syrup on the stove until it boils. The jam should boil for no more than 2 minutes. Then the contents of the pan are left to cool.
As soon as the mixture has reached room temperature, the pieces of fruit are separated from the syrup and the latter is put on re-cooking.After a 15-minute boil, fruits are added to it and the cooked dessert is removed from the stove. It is poured into sterilized jars and rolled up with a special key.
Unusual cooking options
"Christmas Peaches"
A winter dessert that will not leave anyone indifferent, consists of the following ingredients:
- peaches - 0.5 kg;
- apples - 1 kg;
- granulated sugar - 1 kg;
- water - 160 gr;
- cinnamon - 1 stick;
- cloves - 3 pcs.
Apples for this dessert should not be very sour. Antonovka apples are also not suitable for making this jam, as they will quickly boil and turn into mashed potatoes.
Fruits are washed before cooking, if necessary, the skin is removed from peaches and apples, and the fruits are cut into slices.
Pour granulated sugar into a saucepan for cooking jam, add cinnamon, cloves, water and turn on the stove. Constantly stirring, they achieve the dissolution of all the sand in the pan. Having reached this state of the syrup, chopped fruits are added to it and boiled after boiling for 20 minutes at the maximum, removing the periodically formed foam. After 20 minutes, the fire level is set to a minimum and the dessert is cooked for another 20 minutes. After cooking, the prepared jar is filled with jam, not forgetting to put the seasonings indicated in the recipe in it.
With apples and star anise
Another unusual dessert option can be prepared at home, with a kilogram of peaches, apples and a few star anise in the kitchen. It gives the delicacy an original taste and an unusual decor.
Ingredients:
- peaches - 0.5 kg;
- apples - 0.5 kg;
- granulated sugar - 1.4 kg;
- water - 0.5 l;
- star anise - 4 stars.
Cooking:
- peaches and apples are washed with warm water, peeled if desired, stones and partitions are removed;
- granulated sugar is poured into the pan, water is poured and the syrup is boiled, stirring all the time;
- after it boils, apple-peach slices are added to it and left for 12 hours;
- after the fruit is removed from the syrup, brought to a boil and the same fruit slices are added again;
- jam after boiling boil for 30-40 minutes;
- 10 minutes before the end of cooking, star anise stars are poured into the pan;
- the jam is ready to be distributed in sterilized containers.
With nuts
In the Krasnodar Territory, where peaches are an ordinary fruit, jam is often prepared with various nuts.
To prepare a dessert of peaches with nuts you will need:
- peaches - 0.6 kg;
- walnuts without shell - 100 gr;
- granulated sugar - 0.6 kg.
Cooking:
- wash the fruits, peel them and cut into small slices;
- in a large saucepan, cover the peaches with granulated sugar for 60 minutes;
- put the pan on the stove, bring the mixture to a boil and cook for 20 minutes, reducing the intensity of the fire to a minimum;
- add peeled walnuts to the pan and cook for another 20 minutes.
The resulting product is rolled up in clean jars and removed until further use.
peach-almond
Not only walnuts are added to peach desserts. Almonds also go well with this fruit and add a nutty flavor to the peach flavor.
Ingredients:
- peaches - 1 kg;
- granulated sugar - 300 gr;
- almond nuts - 100 gr.
First, the peaches are washed, cleaned of the stalks, skin and pit, cut arbitrarily and placed in a large container, filling the fruit mixture with sugar. The pan is cleaned in the refrigerator for 5 hours, covered with plastic wrap.
After the lapse of time, the pan is put on the stove and the mixture is boiled after boiling over medium heat for 10 minutes.Turn off the stove and wait 1 hour, and then boil the jam again, but for 5 minutes. Then almonds are poured into peach jam and the product is mixed well. After sterilizing the jars, they put the resulting dessert in them and close the lid.
"Peach Orange"
Ingredients:
- peaches - 1.5 kg;
- oranges - 1.1 kg;
- granulated sugar - 1.4 kg;
- water - 500 ml.
For ease of peeling peaches after washing, douse with boiling water and then lower the fruit into cold water. After that, the peel is easily removed from the pulp of the fruit. Small peaches are cut into halves, and large peaches into quarters, removing the pits of the fruit. Oranges need to be peeled from the skin, film and cut each slice in half, also peeling the fruit from the pits.
Pour water into the pan, put it on the stove and add sugar. After dissolving the sugar, a pot of water is filled with prepared fruit. Cook the dessert after boiling for about 40 minutes, stirring it occasionally. After preparing the jam, it is poured into sterilized containers and rolled up. After cooling, the jam is removed for storage.
"Green Peach"
Even from the greenest and most unripe peaches, it is possible to cook the most delicious jam that everyone will like, especially since the smell of young peaches is much more fragrant than mature peaches, which means that every time you open a jar of such a dessert, its aroma will envelop peach haze from all sides. .
Ingredients:
- peaches - 1 kg;
- sugar - 1 kg.
Cooking:
- peaches are well washed and peeled;
- cut the fruit into slices and remove all the bones;
- cut into a large container and pour granulated sugar on top of it, leaving it in this form for 6 hours;
- put the container on the stove and, after boiling, cook for 20 minutes, after which the mixture is left for 10 hours on the stove, covered with a film;
- then the procedure is repeated, and the cooking time for the second time is increased to 30 minutes on low heat;
- after 30 minutes of cooking, jam can be poured into prepared containers and rolled up.
From the fig variety
Fig peach is a fruit that has an original shape and a wonderful peach taste. Figs, like classic peaches, are also used to make various desserts, including jams. They are quite sweet, so jam from them does not need a lot of sugar. In Asia, this is a fairly common fruit, so the Tajik recipe for making fig peach jam is the most common version of a traditional delicacy in these countries.
Ingredients:
- fig peaches - 1 kg;
- sugar - 1 kg;
- water - 400 gr;
- citric acid - 0.25 teaspoon.
Cooking:
- the fruits are washed, cleaned of debris and stalks;
- fruits are blanched with boiling water for about 3 minutes;
- processed fruits are placed in a saucepan, water is poured, sugar is added and boiled for 20 minutes;
- leave the cooked product to brew for 10 hours;
- re-cook dessert 3 times for 10 minutes with a break of 10 hours;
- add citric acid at the end, mix thoroughly;
- pour dessert into jars, roll them up, turn them over and cover with a blanket for a day;
- remove the jam for storage in a cool place.
With pears, plums, ginger and cinnamon
If you want to surprise your guests, you should make a delicious jam from pears, peaches and plums. The highlight of this fragrant delicacy will be ginger and cinnamon.
Ingredients:
- plums - 0.5 kg;
- gelatin (granulated) - 20 gr;
- granulated sugar - 1 kg;
- peaches - 2 pcs.;
- pear - 1 pc.;
- ginger root - 1 cm;
- lemon - 1 pc.;
- cinnamon - 1 stick;
- coriander seeds - 3 gr;
- water - 300 gr.
If there is no ginger root on the farm, it can be replaced with dry powder, and lemon juice with citric acid.
First you need to dissolve the gelatin in water, and after it swells, send it to a small saucepan and heat it on the stove until it is completely dissolved.
Fruits need to be washed, peeled and pitted, cut into pieces, add cinnamon, lemon juice, ginger, coriander to the fruit mixture and pour everything with a glass of water. Send this mixture to a pot for cooking jam and turn on the fire at maximum power.
After boiling, it is necessary to cover the fruit with granulated sugar, reduce the heat and cook the dessert for no more than 20 minutes. Then the cinnamon stick must be removed, and the dissolved gelatin should be poured into the fruit mixture. After mixing the composition, it is poured into sterilized jars, closed, turned over and covered with a blanket for 12 hours.
Thick and moderately transparent jam will be a great addition to the morning fresh toast and a cup of warm tea.
With cherry and rose petals
Three flavors in one dessert can give confiture from peaches, cherries and rose petals. Cherries do not have such an active sour taste as cherries. It is much sweeter, and its sourness is very light, almost imperceptible, so peach and cherry will be combined quite well. The rose will give a shade of subtle bitterness and incomparable aroma.
Ingredients:
- peaches - 500 gr;
- yellow cherry - 0.2 kg;
- rose petals - 15 pcs.;
- granulated sugar - 0.7 kg;
- lemon juice - 70 gr.
Cooking:
- wash the cherries, peaches, remove the seeds;
- cut cherries into halves, peaches into small pieces;
- fill the pan with fruit and berry slices, add sugar, pour lemon juice;
- put the pan on the stove;
- after the liquid boils, cook the mixture for 3 minutes;
- add rose to confiture, mix thoroughly;
- fill sterilized jars with the contents of the pan and put away the treat for storage.
"Romance"
Ingredients:
- peaches - 1 kg;
- strawberries - 500 gr;
- sugar - 1 kg;
- lemon juice - 20 gr.
Peaches and strawberries are washed under running water, if necessary, the peaches are blanched to remove the skin, the peaches are cut in half, the pit is removed and the berries and fruit are covered with sugar for 12 hours, preferably at night.
In the morning, the mixture is put on the stove and left to boil. Then remove from the stove for 1 hour and repeat the procedure several times (ideally 3 times). For the last time, lemon juice is poured into the dessert and the mixture is boiled for about 10 minutes. Then the jam is removed in containers for its storage.
Some housewives fundamentally want to get a transparent dessert at the exit. This can be achieved with a gelfix. The jelly texture of this dessert turns out to be quite transparent, and the preparation of such a blank will not take much time.
With gelfix
Ingredients:
- peaches - 1 kg;
- gelfix - 0.5 sachet;
- granulated sugar - 250 gr;
- water - 30 ml.
To prepare the dessert, the peaches are washed, blanched, peeled, pitted and cut into pieces. Next, the cuts are sent to the pan, water is poured, a mixture of 20 g of sugar and gelfix is \u200b\u200bpoured and the pan is put on the stove. After the mixture boils, the rest of the granulated sugar is poured in and, stirring the mixture, boil it for no more than 10 minutes. The finished dessert is rolled into jars and stored in a cool place.
"Two Suns"
Ingredients:
- peaches - 0.8 kg;
- apricots - 0.7 kg;
- granulated sugar - 1.5 kg.
Fruits are washed, blanched as needed, peeled, all bones removed, cut into pieces. Then they begin to spread the fruits in layers, sprinkling each layer with granulated sugar. Wait for the appearance of juice for 10 hours. Then the fruit mixture is put on the stove, brought to a boil and removed from the stove. The procedure is repeated 3 times, bringing the syrup to a thick state for the last time. Such a dessert is also rolled into jars or, if desired, a treat is eaten immediately after preparation.
"Exo"
Preparing such an exotic dessert is very easy, and for a significant part of the time, fruits for harvesting are infused in their own juice and sugar syrup.
Ingredients:
- peaches - 0.25 kg;
- feijoa - 0.25 kg;
- melon - 0.25 kg;
- granulated sugar - 0.4 kg;
- gelatin - 40 gr;
- Orange peel;
- cloves - 2 pcs.
Cooking:
- wash, blanched peaches, remove pits, cut into pieces;
- wash the melon, peel it from seeds and peel and cut into slices;
- feijoa wash, peel and cut;
- put all the fruits in a saucepan, pour sugar and gelatin into it;
- cover the pan with polyethylene and refrigerate for 12 hours;
- open the pan, put seasoning in the form of an orange peel with clove seeds stuck into it and send it to cook on the stove;
- after boiling the mixture, it is cooked for exactly 3 minutes;
- they take out the orange peel from the pan and roll the prepared confiture into clean containers with a lid.
Such a dessert is cooked for a rather short time, so it retains most of the vitamins present in fruits.
With lemon pit and raspberries
Many housewives are wondering how to make jam thicker. So: thick jam is obtained by using pectin, gelatin and agar-agar in the dessert recipe.These additives bind syrup molecules into a viscous or dense mixture, and jam with such an ingredient does not spread on a plate.
Lemon pits, when added during the cooking process, can also be a good thickener, for example, as in the recipe for a summer peach-raspberry dessert with a lemon pit.
Ingredients:
- peaches - 0.8 kg;
- raspberries - 1 cup;
- water - 50 gr;
- granulated sugar - 1 kg;
- freshly squeezed lemon juice - 100 gr;
- Lemon seeds - 2 teaspoons.
Before cooking, you need to find a small piece of linen fabric, put the bones in it and tie it with a thread.
Peaches and raspberries need to be washed well, checked for the presence of small bugs that often hide in raspberries, pour over boiling water, peel the peaches from skins and stones and put everything in a saucepan.
Cook the composition for 15 minutes, stirring the mixture occasionally. Then sugar and lemon juice are poured into the pan. Lower the bag into it as well, tying it on the handle of the pan for easy removal. While stirring the jam, at the boiling stage, put a jam thermometer in the pan and wait for the temperature to reach 105 degrees. Having reached this limit, the composition is turned off, the bones are taken out of the pan and the jam is distributed among the jars.
The output will be about 1 liter of jam, so 2 jars of 0.5 liters will be enough for such a volume of dessert.
Helpful Hints
The peach is not a very capricious fruit, but also in its preparation, or rather, in the dishes where it is used, also has its own tricks.
- Fruits for jam should not be juicy and ripe. It is worth choosing yellow, slightly browned fruits in the sun.
- Jams and marmalades do not require the preservation of the pieces as a whole, and therefore for such a dessert you can even take very ripe and juicy fruits.
- Peeling the peel will be accelerated if you first dip the fruit in a container of boiling water for 5 seconds, and then transfer it to a bowl of cold water.
- Peach does not have sourness, which is present in many fruits, so you can save the amount of granulated sugar on peach jam and put a little less than it should in it, thus reducing the calorie content of the product.
- To prevent the jam from being candied longer, while preparing a fruit dessert, citric acid is added to the mixture or a little lemon juice is squeezed out.
- If the bones do not move well from the pulp, it is advisable to make jam from such fruits with the kernels present in the fruit. This will not spoil the jam, but, on the contrary, will make it even more fragrant.
- Recipes always indicate the weight of pitted peaches, which in itself has a considerable weight, so when preparing a dessert, you first need to remove all the pits from the fruit, and then weigh the fruits and measure out the right amount for this and that recipe.
- Most often, the jam does not become thick due to excess water in the process of cooking the dessert, and there is a lot of water in the peach. In order for the water to evaporate from the surface of the jam faster, it is more correct to boil the fruit mixture not in a saucepan, but in a wide dish or basin.
- If gelatin and pectin in bags are not available, then pectin-containing ingredients can be added to peach jam. A sufficient amount of pectin is present in such gifts of nature as gooseberries, apples, citrus fruits and currants. They will add originality to the peach dessert, and they will give the syrup the right consistency.
See the next video for how to make peach jam.