Peach Preserves in Korea

Fruit is Korea is super seasonal. There was a period in the late winter where suddenly I could get crates of strawberries for like, 12,000원 and that was a special month.

Being summer, tons of stuff is suddenly in season. During my two years in Korea, I see peaches in the summer, and only in the summer. I keep thinking about peaches and how yummy they are and how they should be in my oatmeal.

So I tried canning them.

It was easy, but time consuming. I used a recipe I found from 100 Days of Real Food that is no pectin and no refined sugar. I don't know how to get pectin and since I wanted to make the preserves, like, today, I didn't want to find it on Gmarket, either. It was originally for strawberries but fruit's fruit.

I divided it by one third for my purposes.

2kg (2 pounds) peaches
1 1/4 C honey
1/2 Apple, grated
1/2 Tbs Lemon Juice

The peaches were cheap. I asked them at the supermarket to make sure the packages were 1kg each like I suspected. My Korean was a little wonky (did you know 한기로 should be 일기로?), but they got what I meant and said yep!

I picked up my cans from Homeplus. They were about 3,500-4,900원 each. I will have to return the taller ones because they are too tall for the largest pot I could find. The water wouldn't cover them to seal properly. These are Quattro Stagioni jars from Bromioli Rocco (an Italian company). They each come with a multilingual instruction book on how to pasteurize and seal the jars. I checked online and people claim they are also freezer safe.

I also picked up my honey at Homeplus. One bottle was almost exactly 1 1/4 cup, so easy peasy. This Acacia Honey (11,000 원) is pretty common in Korea and while expensive, much more natural than sugar. The lemon juice I had, but I also got it at Homeplus. Not it's not fresh squeeze. What do I look like, a hippie? 

I put my jars in the large pot to sterilize for about 10 minutes while I prepared the peaches. I also boiled some water and put the lids in a bowl to sterilize

After the peaches are chopped and peeled, throw all the ingredients in another large pot and boil for about 60 minutes. (The longer the thicker).

After the preserves were ready I poured 1.5c into my blender and gave it a few pulses, then put it back in to mix so there were less chunks. Then I ladeled it into one .5L jar and one .25L jar.

 It made a lot less than I would have liked, but that just means I won't be giving any away to friends...

It also means I can experiment with making other jams from the nectarines and other things around without needing more jars immediately.

After filling the jars and tightly put on the lids, you submerge them again in water and boil them yet again for 10-15 minutes. I'm still waiting for mine to cool. I'm hoping they sealed okay. If they didn't I might try resealing the larger can. Mostly I plan on throwing it in the freezer to keep for a later date.

I'm not even sure why I processed the smaller jar. I wanted to make sure it would work, I guess. I plan on opening it again right away and putting it in oatmeal, anyway.

Update: 

I left the jars in the pot to cool and when I came home. The jars sealed. I read this on another blog that it would probably do it as the jars cool, which is great!