Preserving a Box of Apricots

I am so happy that summer fruits are here.  I love to eat as much as I can fresh, but when I buy fruit by the box I usually plan on a day of kitchen labor to preserve as much as I can.  Apricots aren't around for a very long time so I will make as many things as I can while they are in season.  Nothing beats the taste of fresh summer fruit, even after it's been canned.

I started with a round of apricot jam.  I make an old fashioned version that doesn't use pectin to thicken the end product and also requires less sugar than regular jam.  The only difference is that it takes a little longer to cook down to the right consistency for canning.

The end product is a rich orange colored sweet jam that will be delicious in many sandwiches or as a glaze for baked chicken or pork.  These jars of jam are just the beginning of my canned food stores for the year.

For my second round of processing I decided to make simple apricot halves in light syrup.  These sweet treats will round out any lunch or make a great after dinner dessert any time of the year.

It took ten pounds of apricots to make sixteen pints of canned apricot halves.  I made sure to use the ripest tastiest fruits for this part of my canning endeavors because that pretty much guarantees a delicious end product.  When it was all said and done I was left with about three pounds of slightly under ripe apricots in the box.  I will give those ones a couple more days to ripen and then I will likely be dehydrating those so I can add them to my morning oatmeal in the winter time.

The total cost for these tasty preserves was a mere $45 dollars for the box of apricots.  My reward is eight half pints of jam, sixteen pints of canned halves, and a couple of quarts of dried apricots.  Not bad for a days work!