Monday, July 23, 2012

Green (unripe and already picked) Peach Relish

There's no tutorial tonight, folks.  The concept for the recipe was thought over, a call made to X's mom to get the base recipe, the ingredients processed, and the relish cooked all within an hour.  The camera wasn't in the kitchen until after it was over.

Waiting for purchased peaches to ripen has never been
a virtue.  I made something of them tonight.


I bought a half-bushel box of Chilton County (Alabama) peaches yesterday, worked on getting them sorted and peeled, sliced, and into various solutions of sugar and spices and **snicker** other things nices.  There were two dozen really unripe peaches, initially intended for a couple of pints of pickled peaches for Brother #3 (he loves them) but the recipe couldn't be found and Google was not forthcoming with any facsimile.
MMMmmmmmmmm...

I looked for a peach salsa recipe to can and couldn't find one suitable.  I thought about processing the unripend fruit into peach slices but that'd be boring and waste of a great opportunity to make something very different than what's normally done with peaches around here.

I started thinking about relishes.  Peach relishes.  Green peach relishes.  Again, nothing could be found. You'd think a gozillion hits would yield at least one recipe, wouldn't you?  It didn't.  The gray matter was settled on a relish so it further spun to remember favorite relishes.  And then it remembered Aunt Judy's ripe tomato relish recipe.  Easy.  Ingredients already on hand.  I made it with two dozen unripe peaches.  It's phenomenally different while being incredibly familiar.  It's a relish suitable for field peas, butter beans, cornbread, and turnip greens.  If you find yourself with an abundance of the not-quite-ripe fruit of the Prunus persica, please oh please do yourself a favor and make this quick relish.

Two dozen medium peaches, not quite ripe, finely chopped (CuisinArt does this wonderfully)
1 very large purple or other sweet onion, finely sliced
1 large bell pepper, finely minced
1 1/2 cups white vinegar
1 teaspoon salt

Combine all ingredients in a non-reactive pot over medium heat until mixture comes to a boil, stirring to prevent sticking.  Turn heat down to low, stirring occasionally, until desired thickness is reached.

On the big stove it took thirty minutes from start to finish.

Can immediately.

I actually water bathed it for another thirty minutes, unusual behavior for me, but when in doubt, it's best to proceed with precaution.

This was the yield:  three pints and three half-cups or three and a half plus
a half cup pints?  Or maybe a half-cup shy of two quarts?  
I confuse myself. This is the entire yield.  I've quadrupled
the tomato relish recipe with no adverse affects so
there's no reason to think this green peach relish can't
be quadrupled.

Y'all enjoy!



4 comments:

  1. We made 1/8 recipe batches to taste test. One we made with apple cider vinegar but had to add sugar (1 tablespoon or 1/2 for full batch). We found there was very little liquid (3 tablespoons vinegar) and we didn't need to reduce it down with such a small batch. Is that normal or did we do something wrong? We will be canning nearly 100 green peaches (with patches of red) as we lost a large limb on our peach tree.
    Thank you for the recipe.
    From looking at similar recipes, most say boil for 10 minutes, we will be boiling the pints 15 minutes as some other recipes direct.

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    Replies
    1. Actually I see other recipes at 25 to 30 minutes.

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    2. Thanks from Australia. I'm trying this tonight as I lost a big limb from my peach tree in the wild wind just before Christmas day and another branch is threatening to break with the weight of the peaches so I'm going to thin out the fruit.

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  2. Thanks from Dieppe. We had to remove not ready-to-eat peaches to save our young peach tree which, laden with top heavy peaches, was leaning at a 45 degree angle due to Hurricane Dorian. The tree looks great now after having staked it back up and now I'm going to try this delicious looking chutney with all those unripe peaches. Many thanks for the inspiration. Carol

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