Fresh Peach Preserves

6 cups fresh peaches, cleaned, deskinned, pitted, sliced
6 cups raw cane sugar
1 tbl corn starch
2 lemons
1 tsp kosher salt
.5 c. cup water

Take the sliced peaches and set into sealable bag with 1 cup of the sugar. Let sit a night or two in refrigerator. Liquid will begin to seep from the peaches (tasty goodness). I prepared 3 bags with 2c peaches in each.

Next day, the peaches will be soft, squishy, with more natural juices.

In sauce pan, mix remainder of sugar with the refrigerated peaches. Mix will be dry and rough. Simmer over low heat, and more liquid will come from the refrigerated peach mix, and the sugar will melt. Add the juice of the two lemons and your kosher salt to taste. Bring to boil.

At this point, you may have enough liquid for your peaches. If not, then you'll want to add the 1/2 cup of water, let reduce. Depending on how firm or spreadable you wish your preserves, you can take 2 tbl. of the hot peach liquid and mix in a separate dish with the corn starch. Once blended, you can pour that back into the peach slurry to help thicken.

Once you have the slurry to taste and reached boil for 3-5m, reduce over low simmer for 3-4hrs, depending your desired consistency and how firm (or not) you like your peaches to remain (I like to be able to tell my fruit shapes).

Prepare your jars according to family or manufacturer's plans. I used the boil method, boiling my rings and jars while the slurry reduced. Once done, filled the hot jars with the hot liquid. Lids were dipped in the boiling water for a moment, jars fitted on with rings lightly on, and all jars brought to boil again for 15m. Then fire was turned off, jars cooled in the cooling water. Once room temp, they were removed, set aside, then sit for 12hrs before tightening rings and storing in cool place.

Made 8 pint jars.
Took about 5 hrs on a Saturday afternoon.

NB1: Do not boil your lids. You will ruin the seal and render it a botulism heaven. Dip once you're ready to go to sterilize them.

NB2: Don't fear the sugar (if you don't have to). It's nearly 1:1 ratio to the peaches. However, my results were not freakishly sweet (scarily enough), considering I used family friends' raw field cane sugar from Louisiana. Just tasted before I write this, and it was quite delicious on toast with butter. Peaches were clearly peaches, but didn't fall apart on spreading. However, they were soft to taste and easily melted in mouth. I cooked for more than 3 hours, but in truth, it could have reduced a /tad/ further (not much).

NB3: You can get away without the corn starch - it's all in the patience on the simmer. Turn it into candy, and well, that'll firm up well in a jar.