Canning Fruit

Featured Pro: Sam Talbot
Category: Cooking
Time: 5:12


SAM TALBOT: There’s nothing like freshly picked fruits, especially stone fruit – cherries, peaches, nectarines. Personally, I like to can them. And I’m going to show you how too. I’m Sam Talbot, and this is your GMC Trade Secret.

Hi. How are you?

WOMAN: Hi.

SAM: Could I get some fresh cherries, some apricots and a few peaches?

WOMAN: Yeah.

SAM: Canning is a method of food preservation that’s been used for a very long time. It’s also a great way to extend some of these great summer fruit flavors. So let’s get into it.

First, what I like to do is always wash my fruit. In this case, we have some plums, some peaches, some fresh cherries and some apricots. So what I like to do, I just fill up the bowl with a little bit of water, rinse them off, and then just shake them right off like so.

The reason why I like to can is because, again, you can enjoy these awesome summer stone fruits in the dead of winter. Basically we jar them, we put them downstairs in our basement or we set them on the counter. We forget about them for three to six months. So you can have a fresh plum pie in December or peach iced tea in February; kind of one of the coolest things you can really do.

Now, a lot of people get really intimidated by canning fruit. It’s really simple, it’s fast and it’s easy. So what I like to do is first we’re going to break down our peaches. So we hold the peach. We just take a sharp knife here. So there’s no real rhyme or reason to the cutting here, nothing to be freaked out or even stressed out about. You’re just cutting them up really simply around the pit there, and then we’re going to throw them right into our jar.

The other thing is that if you’re canning legumes, you’re canning vegetables, it’s a little bit of a stricter process. The reason why fruit is a little bit more giving is because they’re really high in acid, so it’s already hard for those bacteria to grow.

So what we do is we take our peach segments. And this is called raw canning, just so everybody’s aware. We’re going to take our raw fruit and throw it right in the jar. And then when you’re at home, you can really riff on any flavors you want. I personally like the flavors of peach and cinnamon together. It goes wonderful. Again, if we’re talking about peach pies and Christmas, that’s the way you want to go.

All right, so let’s finish putting our peaches in here. And just for fun, we’re going to add a little bit of cinnamon stick, because what I’m thinking is doing some preplanning and thinking about the awesome holiday pies I’ll be able to make with these peaches. So we’re just going to throw a little bit of cinnamon in here. Let me set this guy aside like that.

All right, now we’re on to cherries. We’re in Michigan. And I don’t know if you realize this, but 50 percent of the country’s cherries come from right here, Michigan. So we’re in cherry town, and I’m going to show you guys how to do this.

I don’t know if you’ve ever pitted a cherry before, but it’s actually kind of fun and kind of therapeutic. So all you do is take your cherry pitter and you push down. And we’re just going to open up our jar here and just start loading these cherries right inside. And after this, we’re going to add a little bit of Tahitian vanilla bean. And I’m going to show you how to break that down in a second. So we’re just going to keep pitting away here.

All right, so now we have about 20 or 25 cherries pitted. And again, just for a little bit of added flavor, we’re going to break down a vanilla bean. So all you do is take the whole pod, get it nice and steady, and cut right down the center of it. All right, so all we’re going to do is take the back of our knife here, scrape some of these nice seeds in there.

Now, the cool thing about actually putting the pod in here is that you could probably reuse this five or six times. So you go to your cherries three months from now. You can pull this pod out, scrape some more seeds, and use it for another use. So that’s a good little trick for you. We’ll put that right in there like that.

All right, so now we’re going to jump into apricots. All you want to do here is just basically cut off one little side and you can pop that pit right out. We’re going to go right into our jar. The apricots have such wonderful natural flavor in themselves, so we’re not even going to add any spices or any other added ingredients, just the water, which brings me to my next point.

The other great thing about canning to me is that you don’t have any preservatives. You have no sodium. You have nothing to worry about, because you’re making this at your home. So whether you’re using simple syrup or just hot water, it’s always healthy, fast and easy. So now we’re going to go back. We’re going to pull some of our pits out right into the jar here.

So now we finish up with our apricots. Now we’re going to fill up our jars with our boiling water. So the thing here is that all the bacteria that’s on this fruit is killed by water that’s 160 degrees. Boiling water is 212. So we’re going to let this guy whistle. We’re going to put our jars right here on our cutting board. And also I want to mention, whenever you’re canning, you always have to sterilize your jars. So all I did was take the jars and the lids, put them in boiling water for 10 minutes, let them get room temperature, and you’re ready to go.

All right, so our water’s boiling, which means it’s at 212, way above 160, so we’re going to kill all our bacteria. We’re just going to fill our jars up right to the top here. There’s our apricots. The smell that’s coming off these cherries with that vanilla right now is so intense.

Now we’re going to seal our jars. And what happens is, once we seal them, about 10 minutes from now it’s going to create that vacuum. And this top part is going to be sucked down, so we know they’re good to go and we can use them three to six months later.

Now, what I like to do is not only eat them myself, but I love putting a little bow on here, giving them as a gift in the holidays or whenever you want.

All right, and lastly, our apricots. I hope you guys really try this at home. Canning is easy, fun, it’s healthy and it’s simple.

I’m Sam Talbot, and this is your GMC Trade Secret.