Using Scraps from your Kitchen- Turn Peach skins into syrup. I ain't kiddin'.
I know it might sound kinda gross but I promise you won’t believe your taste buds! We would have had a lot more peaches but Mr. Bear felt he should be entitled to most of them, since he tore the hornets nest out of the tree for us 😊. In the end we were lucky enough to get a few pans for ourselves. This same tree produced 8 bushel 4 years ago.
We were working at that time, not on the farm and not canning. I could just cry looking back. We just gave them to everyone we knew. I sure hope we have a good harvest this year. I have so many things I want to make.
I decided on canning some Peach Salsa Verde and Peach Jelly and I then I froze a couple of bags so I ended up with quite a bit. I started finding lots of information on turning your fruit and veggie scraps into delicious eats. There was no reason why I shouldn't give some of them a go. I really didn't think there would be enough flavor but I had nothing to lose as they were going straight to the compost bin either way. I saved all my peach skins and pits as I continued my way thru learning new canning skills and once I had all my (scraps) I was ready.
Instructions:
Dump all of your Peach scraps into a pot and add water just until you can see it, no need to bring all the way above the peaches. Turn the temperature to high and bring to a good boil, then turn it down to medium and simmer for about 45 minutes.
While the scraps are simmering, Sanitize your jars and put them in the oven on the lowest setting. They need to be real hot or they will not seal. I put the lids in a saucepan and bring that to a boil also.
Using a strainer or cheese cloth, go ahead and pour the juices into a measuring bowl. You want to keep the pits and the skins out.
This part went to the compost bin.
Check the measurement of how much juice you ended up with and transfer that to a clean pot and turn on Medium Heat. Add twice as much sugar as juice you had. This sounds like a bunch I know, but it is syrup and it is supposed to be sweet. I had 4 cups of juice so I added 8 cups of sugar. Stir this really good until the sugar all dissolves.
You will want to set a towel on your counter where you plan to fill your jars. Remove a jar from the oven and using a funnel, ladle or scoop your syrup out with a measuring cup into the hot jar. Once you have filled the jar I used a fork to get a lid out the boiling water and layed it on the jar and screwed on the ring. Repeat until all your syrup has been moved to jars. In the next 12 hours, all of your jars should be sealed.
I swear this is the best kept secret ever. Or maybe I am just late in the game and had never heard of it before. This recipe turned out perfect for us and is another item that is great for gifts. I just need to get busy and learn how to make pretty labels.
All that is left is to find out who is making the pancakes or French toast.
Notes:
I halved my scraps and did two batches, in case I screwed up the first one :)
I added 2 Large cinnamon sticks and a vanilla bean to my second batch of syrup. (DELISH)
If you don't use the recommended amount of sugar, yours will be real runny. Ask me how I know!
I did this with Apple Peels Too! I know, right? You're welcome!
This is a whole new World for me and I am Loving It! I hope if this is a newsflash you will give it a try! Let me know if you have success with other scraps :)
We live in the middle of apple country in our state, and I will often go to the local orchards and buy their_damage_ apples. I dehydrate them for apple chips and to chop up and add to my yogurt breakfast cups. They're also GREAT dehydrated and chopped then on top of ice cream with homemade caramel sauce.
Scraps ARE GOOD!
I am having a blast learning all this new stuff. We would like to get a dehydrator and dry apples too. There are 5 wild apple trees here and they are all different. We will have more time this year since we are settled in, to dabble in more.
You are on fire! I love this, my grandma use to do this when I was young...my favorite memories with her in the kitchen. Great tutorial with beautiful photos...and I LOVE your kitchen btw ❤
Awwww, thank you so much! I thought this was the shiznit when I found out. It turned out really good and I couldn't believe it. Thanks for the kitchen compliment too. I designed on it a long time and living in the barn for 11 months allowed me to get the range and hood I wanted. I would do it all over💜 I am really enjoying it.
That looks delicious! I am a big fan of using all the scraps and bits from our fruit and veg! There's a lot of goodness in there especially if its grown without chemicals. Love your kitchen. Must be a blast cooking in there.
These definitely have nothing put on them and they are always delish. We are so lucky to have the tree on our property and I am thrilled to learn how to use peels, so fun! I am truly enjoying the kitchen. This is our first full year so I hope to be more productive this year. Thank you so much for the compliment!
The color of your peach syrup is gorgeous! I actually did this a few years ago because my people love to eat pancakes and waffles like they are going out of style, but your idea of adding cinnamon sticks and vanilla bean is just the greatest!
Most of the time in the summer, I give our food scraps to our pigs and chickens, boy do they love them. In the winter I keep a bucket in the fridge of all the veggie scraps and turn it into stock, it is soo good!
Doesn't it just kill you when you realize how much sugar has to go into a syrup or jam? It's always a 2:1 ratio it seems, and I have tried to get away with shortcuts before, so I totally had a good chuckle when I read your "ask me how I know!" statement, LOL!
That was mighty nice of Mr. Bear to remove the hornet's nest for you, but hopefully he'll leave you more of those gorgeous peaches to enjoy this year:) Also, I love, love, love your blog and am so looking forward to your posts and scrap-eriments, you are awesome!!!
I was happy how the co!or turned out although I wasn't sure if I had enough peels or not, since I split them. We like the cinnamon, vanilla version best. I will probably make it all that way next time. We have 7 bears living around us so we have to fight for our fruit. They ate 3 out of 5 apple trees last year too. I guess in the end we all had plenty though. I do like giving away peaches. People seem more excited over them than anything. This year was my very first canning experiences so I was documenting everything with pictures and I journaled all steps with my wine. I learned alot except what kind of canner I want. I only did water bath last year so I am hoping to add more skills this year. Thank you again for all the cyber love this week. I hope to get better very soon at understanding how best to boost other newbies. I hope you have a great weekend!
Having grown up with lots of bears, I wish you luck in the fruit battle, those of the bruin-set don't relent when it comes to tasty treats! LOL! You could always distract them with some used diapers, the bears at dump seemed to love those, ha ha!
You are so cool to share your harvest! For many years I grew about a 1/2 an acre of pumpkins and gave them away to all the neighbor kids, and they loved them! You share peaches, which of course means you are extra awesome, dang!
For years, I only water bath canned, as I was mildly terrified of pressure canners thanks to horror stories that I heard from many of the grandmas in my life. Over the last couple of years I abandoned my fear and started pressure cooking, it's awesome! I even pressure canned a bunch of tiny potatoes, they turned out fantastic! Still love and mostly do water bathing though:o)
I am so looking forward to more of your homesteading kitchen adventure posts, they rock!
That is awesome, I miss my fruit trees, I moved to the tropics and there is less to can but I am trying to get as much as possible, like Tamarind. I think if you like the peaches, you like Tamarind. Thanks for posting.
You are welcome. I appreciate you stopping by and leaving a comment. We had a lot of Tamarind when we lived in Guatemala. Tea, candy, ices (granizadas). We do like it but I think it is sooooo sweet. We have some tamarind syrup we found at a Mexican Grocery. Chad likes to mix it is water. I don't care for that too much.
Yes they add too much sugar to it, I like it pure with water and honey.
Yum yum, good info on using fruit “byproducts”. My friend made a mean peach butter last year. It’ll be a few more years Until our tree start to bear, but I’ll keep this in mind.
I made apple syrup and jelly with my scraps last year. I also made tomato sauce with their skins. I will be doing all 3 again this year. So glad to find out about this myself too. Thank you for reading my post!
my parents try to never waste scraps but they have never done that, they should try that it looks delicious!
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Thank you! I am so glad I posted something that was useful to some. I do the same with tomato peels. I make tomato sauce. This syrup is the best stuff ever. Thank you for stopping by.