THE BEST PEACH SALSA

This is my favorite peach salsa. I found it a decade or so ago on the Shibaguyz site listed a canning recipe, but they changed the recipe and took down the site. This is my version below. The only change I made was adding some extra honey, which is totally legal in the canning world since honey doesn’t change the pH. I also swapped out jalapeños for an equivalent volume of green peppers because I hate spice.  Even so, since this is untested, my attorney won’t let me put canning directions.

Peach Salsa

  • Servings: 100
  • Difficulty: easy
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peach salsaINGREDIENTS
  • 1 cup white vinegar
  • 12 cups peeled and pitted peaches
  • 2 1/2 cups chopped onion (red looks better, but I use vidalia)
  • 8 jalapeño peppers or 2 green peppers (or some medium-spice combo)
  • 2 red bell peppers (or go wild–do an orange or yellow!)
  • 1 cup fresh, well-chopped fresh cilantro. It’s bolted by the time peaches come in here, so I go to the Latin American or Asian store where it’s sold in bunches. Pro tip: never buy herbs in clamshells.
  • 1/4-1/3 cup honey
  • 2 tablespoon ground cumin
  • 2-3 large cloves very finely chopped garlic.
  • Some spice: Options include 1-1 1/2 tsp cayenne, or 1 tsp (more or less) chipotle
DIRECTIONS

Cooking

  1. Chop all your stuff. Finely mince your garlic unless you’re the sort of person who likes getting entire cloves of garlic in each bite.
  2. Prepare your peaches. There’s the easy way and the hard way.  Hard way–peel them. No one wants to do this, so here’s the easy way. Get a pot and boil some water. Put five or six peaches in at a time for a minute or two. Take them out with a slotted spoon. Put them into a bowl of very cold water or an ice bath. The skin will slide off these instantly. Get a rhythm going to peel all your peaches… dump some in the water, peel the ice bath ones, transfer.
  3. Add all the things into a giant pot. You can quadruple this recipe if you have a stockpot big enough. And you should, because it’s a canning recipe.
  4. Cook this until it boils, stirring (or the bottom stuff will stick and burn and ruin the whole batch).
  5. After it reaches the boiling/bubbling point, reduce the heat. Cook until slightly thickened. It’s about 4-6 minutes. Don’t overcook this unless you want disgusto-mush.

Canning

For canning in general, please see Canning 101 if you haven’t canned before or go to the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving or the National Center for Home Food Preservation for safe canning procedures. Because of the amount of vinegar in this recipe, it’s most likely good to go, but I couldn’t sign off on it in good conscience until I get it officially tested by a master canner.  So, you can freeze this (unless you’re the master canner I’m looking for).

Math

You’ll notice this is a pretty big batch of peach salsa. I made 2.5 of these this year. You may not wish to. Don’t worry, this is also good for math class. Take your kids–currently home for the pandemic, and make them calculate a double batch. Easy!  Need a challenge? Make them convert it to metric volumes and weights.  If you’re really hard core make them cook you up 3/5 of a recipe. Correctly.

VARIATIONS:

GLUTEN FREE: Yes.

VEGETARIAN: Yes.

VEGAN: Yes.

KETO:  No. But, you can make this with no honey and use it sparingly as a glaze for meat, for example, then it’ll be ok.

INSTANT POT: You can make a small batch in the Instant Pot, for sure.

COOK AHEAD:  This will freeze well.

COST: $  If you grow peaches or get them B-grade in season, this is affordable.

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