By Stacy Reed
Selection and Storage
When buying peaches, select ones that are firm to slightly soft, and avoid extremely small, hard, bruised, wrinkled, or fermented smelling peaches. An unripe peach can be placed in a closed paper bag for 1 to 3 days to ripen; and, once ripe, a peach will keep in the refrigerator for up to 1 week. When buying a large number of yellow peaches to can you will need to allow a few days for the peaches to ripen before processing.
Varieties
Peaches can be categorized as freestone or clingstone: freestone peaches have flesh that easily separates from the pit, whereas clingstone peaches have flesh that tightly clings to the pit. When it comes to canning, yellow freestone peach varieties such as Glenglo, Ernie's Choice, Cresthaven, John Boy, Loring, Redhaven, and Sunhigh work best.
Preservation
If planning to can peaches for preservation, be sure to only use yellow-flesh peaches: white-flesh peaches are a low-acid food, which means that water bath canning and atmospheric steam canning aren’t sufficient to eliminate the risk of Clostridium Botulinum poisoning; and, unfortunately, there is not a research-tested recipe for processing white-flesh peaches in a pressure canner. The only safe way to preserve white-flesh peaches is to freeze them—information on this process can be found in the Penn State Extension Let’s Preserve series Peaches Apricots and Nectarines .
Some peach canning recipe ideas to try from the National Center for Home Food Preservation are:
While many people love to buy peaches while they are in season and eat them fresh, yellow-flesh peaches can be safely enjoyed year-round by water bath canning, freezing, or drying them. Peaches freeze nicely when ripe quality fruit is washed and peeled and packed using a syrup or sugar pack.
Source : psu.edu