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Selecting & Preparing the Best Fruit for Canning (Frozen or Fresh)

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With a water bath canner, you can preserve all sorts of farm-fresh goodness for your family.

While understanding canning methods is crucial, identifying the best fruit for canning is even more important.

Starting with poor produce means filling your jars with food no one wants to eat.

Thankfully, by following a few of these handy tips, you can pick produce like a pro!

Lots of fresh & canned fruit
Fresh fruit makes for the best canned goods!

How to Pick, Prep, and Preserve the Perfect Fruit for Canning

Every canning project starts with choosing and cleaning your fruit.

Here’s what you need to know.

How to Choose Ripe Fruit

I find that canning projects work best (and are most cost-effective) when I am working with very ripe fruit. Here’s what I look for when I am choosing fruit for my recipes, based on information from the United States Department of Agriculture.

Stone Fruit (Peaches, Plums, Cherries) and Pomes (Apples, Pears)

Stone fruits and pomes typically grow on trees, and if you’re lucky enough to have one, you’ll have plenty of ripe produce.

The best stone fruits for canning are still adhered to the trees but will come off in your hands with a gentle tug.

Fruit that’s on the ground is often bruised, dirty, or bug infested. You could still eat this fruit (after cutting out the bad bits), but it’s very hard to clean and may not be safe to can.

If you’re purchasing stone fruit, look for products that are uniform in color, slightly soft, and free of bruises.

Holding a fresh pear ready for canning
This pear has a few tiny flaws (especially at the top), but it’s perfectly suitable for canning.

Berries (Strawberries, Raspberries, Blueberries, Grapes)

Ripe berries are uniform in color.

That means your blackberries are entirely black, and your raspberries are entirely red.

Speckles of white or green mean that the berries aren’t quite ready to go, and they could taint the flavor of your final product.

Freshly canned berries made into jam
Very ripe berries make excellent jam.

Overripe berries are very squishy, and they can start to fall apart between your fingers. While these berries could be fine for jam recipes (as they’ll cook down significantly), they’re also much harder to clean. I typically eat these berries instead of canning them.

Citrus Fruit (Oranges, Lemons, Grapefruit)

I can’t grow citrus fruit where I live (and I am sad about that), so I must buy my produce from the store. It takes time and a little practice to shop for perfect fruit, but it’s possible!

Ripe citrus fruit is firm to the touch. It should also smell like citrus (not like nothing) when you hold the product up to your nose.

An orange cut in half
This orange has the perfect balance of peel to meat.

I often ask the grocery staff to slice through a piece of fruit for me before I buy a batch. Some citrus fruit is coated with a thick rind that leaves little meat behind. I don’t use any citrus with a too-thick rind. Similarly, too-thin citrus may not have enough natural pectin for canning projects.

Tropical Fruit (Pineapple, Mango)

Tropical fruits are typically imported (at least where I live), so I have to buy them at the store. Very ripe specimens will smell like fruit when you hold them up to your nose. They shouldn’t be squishy or soft between your fingers.

Juicy pineapple cut up into slices and without a core
This very ripe pineapple has plenty of juice.

How to Choose Frozen Fruit

The U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends freezing fruit in the summer and making jams and jellies during the cold winter months. I agree!

It’s really easy to find fruit in the summer, but it’s far too hot to stand over a water canner. During the winter, I appreciate a warm stove.

Freezing can break down the cellular structure of fruit, so this isn’t a great way to preserve whole fruits (like plums) for canning. They’ll turn to mush in the process. But any kind of frozen fruit could make for a good jam, jelly, or sauce.

A handful of frozen cranberries
Stiff berries (like cranberries) freeze especially well.

Choose produce that was frozen quickly and has no ice crystals or freezer burn. Remember to thaw your fruit before measuring it for your recipe (as frozen fruit is often bigger than it is when thawed).

A Word About Previously Canned Fruit

It’s tempting to buy previously canned food (like pineapples) and then can them again in your water canner with a few extra spices. In general, this isn’t smart.

Canning is a form of cooking, so previously canned items may not have the texture you expect from your final product. These items may also lose core vitamins and nutrients when canned multiple times. Don’t try this shortcut.

Cleaning and Preparing Fruit

The Ohio State University Extension explains that all fruit must be washed carefully, even if it’s going to be peeled as part of the recipe. This step is relatively quick and easy.

How to Clean Most Fruit

I place my fruit inside a colander if it’s small or inside the sink if it’s big. Using a firm stream of water, I rinse my fruit and rub it between my fingers to remove any dirt and debris.

Cleaning a plum under running water
Stone fruit, like plums, is really easy to clean with your fingers. I don’t even use a colander.

Most fruit will bruise if scrubbed or manhandled. Some things (like raspberries) are incredibly delicate and could fall apart if pressed too hard. Treat your fruit as gently as you can.

Don’t soak the fruit, as it could cause the items to lose flavor. A rinse is usually enough.

Sorting Fruit Carefully

The rinsing process provides you with the perfect opportunity to inspect your fruit carefully. I pull berries up in handfuls out of the colander to look for pieces that are bruised, darkened, or otherwise not ready for cooking.

Three Reasons to Consider Growing Your Own Fruit

Plenty of produce is ready and waiting for you at the grocery store. However, there are many really good reasons to dig into gardening and raise your canning ingredients. These are three of the reasons I grow most of my fruit.

Holding a home grown tomato
Tomatoes (the forgotten fruit!) are especially easy to grow.

1. Lowered Produce Cost

Smart canners load up their jars when produce is ready and relatively cheap. In the peak of summer, for example, I can buy a flat of blueberries for almost nothing and create canned pie filling, jam, and jellies.

However, some fruit remains stubbornly expensive regardless of the season. Things like raspberries are too delicate to ship to the store cheaply, so it’s hard to buy enough for a full canner load without spending too much.

After you’ve canned for a while, you’ll get a good feel for the things you often want and can’t afford. Those crops are probably better to grow in your garden.

2. Staggered Harvest

While buying a flat of berries makes canning a whole bunch really easy, I find that excess stressful. Most recipes work best with freshly picked fruit. If I buy a flat, I’m committed to canning all of it within 24 hours.

Growing my crops means picking what I need for that day and canning it immediately. If the food on my vines or trees isn’t quite ready yet, I can leave it in the garden to can another day.

Small-batch canning like this tends to lead to better products in my pantry—and less stress for me.

3. True Ripeness

Fruit you buy in the store may be chemically altered to regulate its ripeness. As the University of Maryland explains, producers can use chemicals to slow down ripening or speed it up, depending on when the item might be sold.

Chemically altered fruit may be perfectly safe, but I feel like it’s not as tasty. Fruit left to ripen on the vine has a sweeter, more complex flavor than fruit fast-tracked to soften in a grocery store.

When you grow and harvest food yourself, you’ll taste the difference.

Best Fruits for Canning

I can almost every type of fruit I grow (and plenty that I don’t). If you’re looking for inspiration, these are a few of my favorite fruits to can, split up by skill level.

Fruits for beginners:

  • Sauce (applesauce, plum sauce)
  • Whole fruit (plums, strawberries)
  • Sliced fruit (peaches, pears, pineapple)
  • Jam (raspberry, pineapple, blueberry)
  • Marmalade (orange, lemon, grapefruit)

Fruits for intermediate canners:

  • Pie filling (blueberry, raspberry, and apple)
  • Jelly (pomegranate, pepper)

Fruits for advanced canners:

  • Tomatoes (tomato sauce, tomato paste, whole tomatoes)
  • Conserves (cranberry, plum)
Selecting And Preparing The Best Fruit For Canning
June Gardner

June Gardner

June is a food preservation expert who loves turning her summer garden’s bounty into homemade meals year-round. For her, there’s nothing more satisfying than crafting a winter lasagne with tomato sauce made from plants she nurtured from seed. With a passion for food security, June has mastered water-based canning and uses her advanced dehydrating skills to savor the sweetness of summer, even in winter.