No sweetener or sugar added peach butter - Ask Extension
I am wanting to make peach butter. I simply want to use peaches and a bit of lemon juice to prevent discoloration. My peaches are sweet enough that th...
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No sweetener or sugar added peach butter #770035
Asked August 31, 2021, 12:33 PM EDT
I am wanting to make peach butter. I simply want to use peaches and a bit of lemon juice to prevent discoloration. My peaches are sweet enough that they don’t need any added sweetener. I do plan to hot water bath preserve them. I looked at a couple of recipes for preserving and it said like a five or 10 minute hot water bath for half pint jars. That just doesn’t seem like enough time. I am finding it very difficult to find recipes for how I wish to make my peach better. I want a peach or actually any type of fruit butter with just the fruit and not the taste of added sweetener.
Coos County Oregon
Expert Response
Hi Jody. A peach butter recipe without added sugar is hard to find because sugar plays more than one role in preserving fruit. It is safe to make fruit butter without added sugar but the quality really suffers. Besides flavor, sugar in peach butter helps retain color, flavor and nutrients. Peaches seem to be especially susceptible to these quality changes in a negative way. Canned peach butter will begin to darken considerably and have flavor changes that may be undesirable within 2 to 6 months. Lemon juice (citric acid) can help brighten the flavor and taste less sugary but it won't stop quality changes.
Take a look at our Fruit Butters publication for a Basic Fruit Butter recipe. For peaches and other light-colored fruits in the preparation step, I would also recommend you add the anti-browning step after removing the skins from the peaches to give color retention an additional boost. See directions for Maintaining color and flavor found in our Canning Fruits booklet on page 2.
I also found a Peach-Ginger Butter recipe on the Ball and Kerr web page, www.freshpreserving.com that looks lovely. It has has less sugar than the Basic Fruit Butter recipe and a great color result. I really like the serving suggestion in the recipe photo - it looks like they are using toasted baguette slices with a schemer of herbed-goat cheese and the Peach-Ginger Butter garnishing the top.
Canning fruit butters for 10 minutes is the OSU Extension and freshpreserving.com recommendation. Just be aware of your elevation and make an altitude adjustment, add 5 minutes for 1001 feet to 3000 feet; 10 minutes for 3001 feet to 6000 feet and 15 minutes for 6001 feet to 8000 feet.
Take a look at our Fruit Butters publication for a Basic Fruit Butter recipe. For peaches and other light-colored fruits in the preparation step, I would also recommend you add the anti-browning step after removing the skins from the peaches to give color retention an additional boost. See directions for Maintaining color and flavor found in our Canning Fruits booklet on page 2.
I also found a Peach-Ginger Butter recipe on the Ball and Kerr web page, www.freshpreserving.com that looks lovely. It has has less sugar than the Basic Fruit Butter recipe and a great color result. I really like the serving suggestion in the recipe photo - it looks like they are using toasted baguette slices with a schemer of herbed-goat cheese and the Peach-Ginger Butter garnishing the top.
Canning fruit butters for 10 minutes is the OSU Extension and freshpreserving.com recommendation. Just be aware of your elevation and make an altitude adjustment, add 5 minutes for 1001 feet to 3000 feet; 10 minutes for 3001 feet to 6000 feet and 15 minutes for 6001 feet to 8000 feet.
