spicy peaches to go!

I made spicy peach jam last weekend. It's amazing. Here is a "recipe", in narrative form, for you to try. This made 72 ounces of jam, which I canned. You can make less and eat all of it at once, and then you don't have to can anything. Or you can make the same amount and eat all of it a once and die from spiciness. And peach overdose.

So. Take 6 pounds of halved, pitted peaches (~12 cups). Boil them. Use the high heat to get them to a boil perhaps and then reduce to medium so it isn't too crazy. Maybe also add a leeeetle bit of water to the pan at the beginning so the peaches don't burn before they start releasing their juices. Once they're on the mushy side, mush them up. I use the immersion blender which is least messy or you could think of some creative method. If you peel the peaches first you probably don't need to blend them at all, but the peach peels won't break down on their own which makes for a odd-textured condiment.

Once they're mushed, add sugar (4.5 cups) and stir well. The sugar is nice since fresh peaches can be secretly a little sour. If you're making preserves you have to add this much sugar, the sugar has preserving power. It changes the osmolarity of the solution so that bacteria are more likely to burst than to survive and eat all the peaches before you can. So, if you're not canning this jonx you can add as much or as little sugar as you choose. Honestly, though, nice and sweet tastes pretty darn good.

As the peaches cook they also release protein which makes a foam on the liquid's surface. Skim that foam. Put it in a dish and taste it while you cook, it is delicious and not poisonous at all! Just peachy! Once no more foam is rising to the surface, the peaches are done cooking. You can keep cooking them of course, it will make for a thicker jam. If you're not sure if you like how thick it is, see how well the sauce coats a spoon. The spoon will quickly reveal the jam's true thickness.


Then I let it cool down, maybe go for a swim at Horsetooth or something fun like that for a couple hours. (This is a lot of peaches! It doesn't want to cool down at all, it wants to be hot AND spicy!) This is so I can taste it properly when I'm adding in the spices. I add cayenne pepper, paprika, and chile powder (which does also have a little bit of cumin, onion powder, and garlic powder in it, but it only helps the situation). Also ground up chiles (which are chiles only) are nice. And ground red pepper. I add the spices by the 1/2 teaspoon and taste often. I think for this batch it ended up with 1 teaspoon GRP, 1/2 teaspoon plus a bit of chile powder and 1 teaspoon paprika. I didn't have ground chiles or cayenne (I used those in apricot jam though, and that's good too). It's really nice to have a tasting platform like little pieces of bread with cream cheese or graham crackers or even... toast!

And then I heat everything back up to boiling and can it. The blog Food in Jars (link goes straight to recipe index) has good information on small batches of jam (like, how much fruit makes a nice little batch and how much sugar to add to that little bit of fruit) and on canning in general. Even yogurt-making.

Henjoy!