My mother had made jam when we were young, though I don't recall that culinary adventure. She was my go to expert while I was trying my hand for the first time at jamming.

I also, over the past year, had scoured the used bookstore here in Phoenix and found a couple of old books on preserving food. 

First thing first: You have to get the skin off and cut up the peaches. This is by far the most time consuming part of the process. Bring a pot of water to a boil and drop in a few peaches at a time. Check them and see if their skin is starting to get loose. Pull them out and plunge them into ice water. The skin should peel right off. I then cut up the peaches.

I made a batch without using pectin and it came out like a peach sauce/compote. The peaches really broke down and it was looser (obviously without a thickening agent) than jam/preserves. It's prefect for spooning over ice cream. I used sugar, a vanilla bean and I cooked it down over low-med heat. 

For the jam, I did use pectin. It works so well, and it comes with instructions for each kind of jam or jelly that you would like to make. I ended up just going off those instructions, from the Sure Jell brand of pectin. 

4 cups of peaches

2 Tbsp. lemon juice

5 1/2 cups of sugar

1 box of pectin

Ideally, once you've made all the jam, and placed it in the jars, it needs to be placed in a large pot with a metal rack in it (which keeps the jars from sitting flat on the bottom of the pot). If you have a glass top stove (like I do) you CAN NOT put one of these pots on it. It will crack the glass top. So, to make my preserving process work, I took my canning pot to my parents house (they live 5 minutes away from my house) and used their gas stove. 

Wash all jam jars with hot water and soap. Dry them. Keep the lids together in a bowl. Set the bands aside for now. At this moment, I would get the water going on your canning pot. 

Before I begin cooking, I turn the oven on to 200 degrees F and place the freshly washed, slightly warm from the hot water, jam jars in the oven on a sheet pan. This keeps the jars warm so that when you put the hot jam into the jars, they won't shatter from the extreme change in temperature. I also like to get a kettle of water on the stove at this point. You will need the hot water to sterilize the lids before they are placed on the jars of jam. 

Put 4 cups of peaches and 2 Tbsp. lemon juice into a large pot. Stir in one box of pectin and bring to a full rolling boil. The boil shouldn't stop even when you are stirring. 

At this point, I like to turn on my kettle of water for the lids. 

Once you have reached the full rolling boil, add the sugar quickly. Return to a full rolling boil. Boil for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Take off the heat and skim any foam off the top. 

If you are unsure if your jam is done, take a spoon and put a little jam on it, then place it in the fridge for 1 minute. If it sets up, your jam is good to go.

Pour the water from the kettle over the lids. 

Pull jam jars from the oven. Using a wide opening funnel, ladle the jam into the jars. Fill each jar to 1/8" of the top. There is a nice little kit you can get for making jam. It comes with a pair of tongs for removing the jars from the canning pot, a wide opening funnel, a little wand with a magnet on the end to pick the lids out of the hot water and a long piece of plastic that one end is used for measuring how much room you have left in the jar (ie. your 1/8" from the top) and on the other end, it is used by placing it in the jar along the side and rotated around the jar to get all the excess air out of the jam before sealing it. The kit costs about $15 and I was able to purchase is at Fry's Grocery Store.

Make sure the mouth of the jam jar is completely clean. Pull a lid from the water and dry off. Place the lid on the jam jar. Put a band around and tighten. 

Once you have done this to all your jam jars, they should go into your boiling canning pot. I left mine in for around 5-7 minutes. I then removed the jars and set them on a dish towels and left them over night. Shortly after removing them from the canning pot, you will hear the *snap* of the lids as the seal the jars. (This may also happen in the pot, but most of mine occur after they were removed from the pot.) I let the jars sit over night, before giving away or storing in my pantry. Once you open one of the jars, you have to refrigerate, just like with any store bought jar of jam. 

Notes:

*I got my jam jars at Fr
y's Grocery Store, but I also saw them at Walmart a lot cheaper, so definitely check that out.

*I've heard of people washing their jam jars in the dishwasher and then keeping them in the hot dishwasher till they are ready to put the jam in the jars, which is a great time saving idea.