Balsamic Pickled Apricots: Home Canning | Boise Food Photographer

It’s been about a year since my last food blog.  Around my house, it’s canning season, so I thought it would be a good time to present a new recipe.  This one is extremely easy and it’s for all the home canning enthusiasts out there.
What you need:
1 cup–white balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup–sweet vermouth
1/2 cup–honey
1/2 cup–water
2 –3″ sticks of cinnamon, broken
6–whole cloves
2 pounds–ripe apricots
Step 1:
For syrup:  In a medium stainless steel saucepan combine vinegar, vermouth, honey, water and cinnamon.  Bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered for 5 minutes.
Remove from heat and let stand for 30 minutes.  Make sure to Remove cloves & cinnamon sticks.  (I place mine in a tea diffuser while cooking to make for a quick and easy removal)
 
(I forgot to take a picture of the mixture in the saucepan.  Here’s a photo of the mixture–right before step 7)
Step 2:
-Fill large stock pot with water and bring water to a boil.
-Blanch Apricots:  Carefully submerge scored apricots into boiling water for 30 to 60 seconds.  Immediately transfer hot apricots to a bowl of ice water.

 

 

 Step 3: 
When apricots are cool enough to handle, remove and discard the skins
Step 4:
Cut each apricot in 1/2 and remove the pit.
 Step 5:
Return the vinegar & vermouth solution to boiling (Sorry no picture)
 Step 6:
Pack apricot halves into hot sterilized canning jars….leaving 1/2 of head space.
Step 7:  
Pour hot syrup over the apricots to cover…maintaining the 1/2 head space.
Remove air bubbles with a knife.  Wipe jar rims and adjust lids.
Step 8:
Process jars in a hot water bath for 10 minutes.  (start timing when your water returns to a boil)
Step 9:
Remove Jars from the water bath.  Let cool on wire rack.
And here it is…the finished product.
The seed like item you see in the broth is actually an apricot kernel.  It’s extracted from the inside of the apricot pit and tastes like a bitter almond.  This is a slight modification from the above recipe.  my husband and I chose to add 1 apricot kernel (chopped up) to the each jar….a little trick we picked up from making jam and marmalade’s recipes in the Blue Chair Jam cookbook.

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