In the whole “waste not, want not” way of thinking, I decided to make some peach pit jelly after a friend had mentioned it. I figured it would be a great way to use up what would normally be thrown away!!
Now, we don’t eat jams or jellies very often because of the sugar content. I think last year we went through less than 1/2 dozen pints of jam, eating it maybe once a week or so. And this year hopefully we’ll eat even less as I try to cut sugar out of our diets more and more.
But anyways….I followed this recipe but changed it slightly because I used Pomona’s natural pectin and calcium water.
First I dumped all the skins, pits, and peach-y leftovers into a pot and poured in enough water to cover.
Appetizing no?
Then I left it out on the stove overnight looking all nasty and yuck. Seriously, it did not look appetizing at all!
After it sat out I then strained it through some cheesecloth and followed the directions in the Pomona box. I did not take pictures during this as I obviously have a hard time following directions. I put the pectin in at the wrong time, put the sugar in at the wrong time….and made a wretched mess as I let a sugar-y, peach-y pot overflow all over my stove.
After it finally got to about 220 degrees, I poured it into my jars and processed in a water bath canner for 10 minutes.
And it’s delightfully delicious!
FYI – I used 3 cups of sugar to 4 and 1/2 cups of peach ‘juice’.
Peach Pit Jelly
Ingredients
- 4 qts Peach peels and pits
- Pomona's natural pectin
- 3 cups organic sugar
Instructions
- Save peels and pits of peaches when canning. Barely cover them with water in a large kettle. Bring to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes. Let stand overnight.
- Strain juice through cheesecloth.
- Measure 3 cups juice into a large pan.
- Add 1 package pectin.
- Bring to vigorous boil.
- Add 3 cups sugar and boil rapidly until it reaches "sheeting off" jelly test, 220 degrees.
- Skim off foam.
- Pour into hot jelly jars and seal in a water bath canner. (follow times given for jelly)
Notes
Donielle Baker
Oh man, I did 2 bushels of peaches earlier in the summer and tossed the pits and skins. I just hate it when I find out I wasted something good. Oh well, there's always next year! Thanks for all the healthy and delicious ideas!
You say that you used 3 cups of sugar but you used Pomona’s pectin. I though you don’t need to use sugar with Pomona’s?
@Renee, I’m trying to remember, but I think I just followed the directions from pomona. And because there really wasn’t any ‘fruit’ in it I couldn’t follow the normal jelly recipe.
Just finished canning 7 qts of peaches off our two trees (first picking). Kept thinking while my daughter and I were peeling and nibbling…”There’s got to be something to do with these scraps.” Googled and found this recipe! Thank you so very much! And I’ve already shared on my Facebook page. Got lots of friends who can, preserve or who are interested in such. “Waste not, want not.”
Hello: I’m 68 years old, and as a child I helped my mother make peach jam, jelly, etc. (and all other fruits we could grow or purchase). Mama never threw anything out. So cooking the peach peelings and making jelly was a way of life for us many years ago. Glad others are finding it now. I’m having one heck of a difficult time finding a recipe for low sugar peach jelly. Jam is easy to find, but jelly?
I followed recipe but added 1/4 cup lemon juice to 9 cups of juice, 7 cups of sugar, 3 pkgs of pectin! It never thickened. Even after boiling for 20 mins. Way too sweet. I’m canner now. May use as syrup or maybe toss. Disappointed. Any idea why it failed?
Jelly doesn’t normally thicken while it’s still being cooked…I don’t think I mentioned that mine got thick. You won’t be able to see what texture it is until it’s canned and cooled.
And since you added things to the recipe and tripled the batch, I can’t really say exactly what went wrong (if it did in fact not set up after it cooled) – canning has to be pretty specific. And if you added a liquid (like lemon juice) you should reduce the amount of “peach juice” used. Jelly also contains a lot of sugar – that’s simply what jelly is. 😉 So by reducing the sugar in the recipe (a triple batch would have been 9 cups) something could have happened there as well.