Peach Butter Recipe – Sustainable Cooks

This homemade Peach Butter recipe is an amazing way to preserve the peach harvest. This is the best low-sugar peach sauce, and it’s delicious on toast, yogurt, muffins, or oatmeal.

Homemade peach butter is a classic summer favorite. You can make it on the stovetop or simmer this recipe in a slow cooker all day (your house is going to smell amazing!).

This peach butter recipe is suitable for a canning in a water bath canner, but I’ll also teach you how to freeze it if canning is not your jam.

If you have lots of leftover peaches after making this recipe, check out our tutorials on canning peaches, peach preserves, peach syrup, how to freeze peaches, dehydrating peaches, peach compote, peach freezer jam, and homemade peach ice cream.

Ingredient notes

• Peaches – fresh or frozen will work. For fresh, aim for heavy, ripe peaches. If you can find freestone peaches, they’re much easier to cut and work with. Got annoying cling peaches? Check out our guide on how to cut peaches to get around those pits.
• Sugar – this is entirely optional, but I do recommend a bit just to keep the colors bright and fresh. See notes later in the post about making it entirely sugar-free.
• Lemon – I use both the zest and the juice in this recipe.

How to Make Peach Butter

*I’ll walk you through it here with some photos and tips, and you’ll also find a printable recipe card at the bottom of the post with exact measurements, etc. You can also click “jump to recipe” to skip down.

Wash your peaches and chop them into semi-uniform pieces. This recipe doesn’t have you peel the peaches, but you are welcome to if you’d prefer. If you need tips, check out our post on how to peel peaches.

Grab a heavy-bottomed saucepan (I used my enameled Dutch oven), and add the peaches, water, cinnamon, lemon zest/juice, and vanilla extract to the pot.

Cooking over medium-high heat, bring everything to a boil for 2 minutes. Once the 2 minutes are up, reduce the temp to medium-low and cook everything for 15-20 minutes or until the peaches are considerably softened.

If you have an immersion blender, carefully blend the peach mixture directly in the pot. No immersion blender? Carefully transfer everything to a blender or food processor. If you’re using a blender, remove the plastic cap from the lid and place a clean towel over the top to allow steam to escape.

Return the peach mixture to the saucepan, add the sugar, and cook over medium-low heat, stirring often until the mixture has reduced or thickened to your preferences (~5-15 minutes).

Pro tip: Unlike my annoying baby fine hair, the peach butter will look thick and shiny when it’s ready.

Technically you’re done at this point if you’d like to be. Put it in containers and freeze if you’d like. But, if you want to learn to also can it, read on! All the cool kids are doing it.

How to Can Peach Butter

Prepare your canner by filling it with water. You need to have enough water to cover the jars by 1 inch once the water is boiling.

Set the canner on the stove. Turn the burner to high. Once it reaches a boil, reduce it to a simmer. You want to keep the water hot so that everything is ready when you jars of peach butter are ready to go.

Wash and clean your jars. You’ll want to keep them warm to avoid having them crack when placed in the canner. You can fill them with hot water, or place them on a tray in the oven at 170˚F.

Wash your lids and set them aside in a clean place. You no longer need to simmer lids in water to keep them sterile. Woot!

Ladle in the warm peach butter (I like using a canning funnel), leaving 1/4 inch of headspace. Headspace is defined as the space between the top of the food and the top of the jar. Remove the bubbles from the jar (I use a plastic chopstick).

Use a wet clean rag and wipe the rim of the jars to make sure they are free of any delicious peach sauce.

Place a new, clean lid on the jar, and then a ring, and tighten the ring to fingertip tight (tight enough that it won’t come off, but not so tight that a normal person couldn’t budge it).

Do not add the jars to the canner as you finish filling them. You’ll want to pack the canner all at once to avoid uneven processing.

Bring the water in the canner back to a rolling boil and then lower your jars into the canner using a jar lifter. Put the lid on the canner.

Processing times will vary based on altitude and size of jar. See the chart below.

Once the jars have been processed for the appropriate amount of time, remove the canner from the burner, wearing oven mitts carefully take off the lid of the canner, and allow it to sit for 5 minutes. Pro tip: I tend to just slide the canner into the middle of my stove, as it weighs a ton.

Carefully remove the jars with canning tongs, and place them on a thick towel in a place where they can be undisturbed for 12 hours.

The lids will likely start to pop within 20-30 minutes of being removed from the water. That popping sound is music to your ears, as it tells you that everything has been sealed. It’s a reward for all your work!

After the jars have rested for about 12 hours, press down in the middle of each lid. If it “gives” at all, the jar didn’t seal. Either enjoy it that day, put it in the fridge, or reprocess it.

What if my jars don’t seal?

If you’ve correctly processed the peach butter, and the lids still didn’t seal, you can reprocess them.

Double-check to make sure there are no:

• Chips in the rim of the jar
• Dried peach sauce on the rim (anything between the rim and the lid may prevent a seal.

Best practices would involve using brand-new lids for reprocessing. Set aside the old lids to use for dry storage (related: Pantry Essentials for the Home Cook).

If the jars don’t seal on the second attempt, you likely have a bad batch of lids, or your canning process has a step missing. Email me and we’ll try to troubleshoot what is going on.

For unsealed jars, you can place them in the fridge. Eat the peach butter within two weeks. Or freeze for up to 6 months.

Storage

Non-canned: Store in the fridge for up to two weeks, or freeze for 3-6 months.

Canned: Once the jars have sealed, remove the rings. Label and store sealed jars in a cool (best results are 50-70˚F) dark place for up to 12-18 months.

If you have the space available, do not stack the jars on top of each other more than two jars high. If you open a jar for use and don’t use it all, you can store it in the fridge for 2 weeks.