Preserving Peaches & Peaches for Baby

So many peaches, so many different uses, we hope you like some of the following ideas that will help with your preserving your peaches.

There is no set amount of peaches to use, adjust to how many peaches you have.

Note: We Blanched all the peaches with all the following peach preserving ideas listed below. We removed the peach skins by bringing a stainless steel stock pot of water to boiling stage and added our rinsed off ripe peaches (5-6) into the boiling water (You can make an X cut in the bottom of each peach before placing them into hot water to help with skin removal) 1-2 minutes or until skins loosen. Remove peaches with large wire draining spoon or slotted spoon, having a bowl ready with cold water and some ice to cool off peaches quickly, remove skins, stone/pit and slice or purée.

See BHG for step by step pictures for blanching peaches.

Also see Preserving Peaches and Peaches for Baby Food

Sliced Peaches for Freezing

Slice skin free peaches and add them to a bowl of lemon water (2 tablespoons lemon juice with around 5 cups water) this helps the peaches to not turn brown. Drain off lemon water from sliced peaches and place on a parchment paper covered half baking sheet or baking sheet of your choice. We Layered each baking sheet with 3 layers of sliced peaches, adding a piece of parchment paper between each layer and placed the peach sliced filled baking sheet flat in the freezer overnight or until peaches are completely frozen.

Remove frozen peach slices from the freezer and place the amount of sliced peaches desired in freezer bags. We double bagged a generous two cups of the peach slices.

Usually around 4 cups of sliced peaches are used for a 9 inch pie.

When peaches are frozen separately they are easier to use in portion amounts for smoothies, yogurt and etc….

Note: We used wax paper but parchment paper probably would be less messy and wouldn’t rip as easily. Freezer paper would probably work well too.

Drying Sliced Peaches with Dehydrator

Follow the above freezing recipe except after draining peach slices place them on dehydrating trays and place trays in your Dehydrator and follow the directions with your Dehydrator. Ours took about 2 1/2 days to dry this depending on thickness of your peaches etc….

We bagged our dried peach slices in a Ziploc bag with a food safe moisture packet or you could remove all the air with a Vacuum food sealer.

Puréed Peaches and Bagged Sliced Frozen Peaches

Puréed Peaches

Purée peaches in the blender adding Fruit Fresh produce protector if desired for preventing browning, following the directions on container.
Place in containers desired and freeze. We used quart sized bags and two cups of puréed peaches to use for sauces, smoothies and etc……

Bagged and Sliced Frozen Peaches

We used Quart Ziploc Bags adding 4 cups of peaches; you can also add Fruit Fresh (following direction on container) or lemon juice to prevent browning.

Puréed Peaches for Baby Food

We (blanched peaches and removed skins and stone/pit) puréed peaches in blender and poured purée in ice-cube trays, freeze and when frozen remove frozen peach cubes, double bag in gallon sized bags and place back into freezer still frozen until ready to use or you can keep frozen cubes in the freezer up to 3 months.

Note: Do not re-freeze thawed baby food and check with your doctor the appropriate time to introduce peaches into a baby’s diet.