Lip smackin' good apricot nectar and leather

As a Utah native, we are lucky if mother nature blesses us with apricots. This year was one of those years. That’s why I took full advantage of my full harvest and made some delicious apricot nectar and leather–all from the same recipe.

I need to give a shout out to my mother-in-law for supplying me with the recipe and the juicer/strainer. Without her, this plethora of deliciousness would not exist. So, without further ado, here’s how you can make some for yourself!

Wash and pit your apricots

You can make as little or as much as you want with this recipe. It calls for six cups of washed and pitted apricots. I made eight batches worth. So, I ended up washing and pitting 48 cups of apricots.

Apricot nectar — Apricots ready to be cooked

Boil your apricots

Dump all of your pitted apricots into the appropriate amount of water in a pot. Bring them to a boil and let simmer for 10 minutes. You want the apricots to get nice and soft so they will be easy to push through the strainer.

Process apricots through strainer

This is the fun part. This job will be a lot easier and quicker if you use a food strainer. They are about $35 online. You can also buy a Fruit and Vegetable Strainer that attaches to your Kitchen Aid. If you do a lot of canning, you can use this appliance for lots of recipes, including salsa.

If you don’t have a strainer, you can push the apricots through a fine sieve and catch the nectar in a bowl.

Apricot leather — Pulp from the apricots that you can use for apricot leather.

This is an easy but a messy job. So, I would recommend doing it outside. Once, you’ve strained all the apricots, add the water from the pot that you boiled them in until the nectar is the consistency that you like. This apricot nectar is not meant to be concentrated.

Add sugar to apricot nectar

The most important step is to add sugar to the apricot nectar. It’s about one cup of sugar for every six cups of apricots. So I ended up using about 10 cups! Put the pot back on the stove until the sugar is dissolved.

Process the nectar in jars

Finally, pour the apricot nectar into quart-size jars and process in a hot-water bath for 20 minutes. If you’r unfamiliar with water-bath canning, check out this helpful link to walk you through the steps.

Don’t forget to make the leather

With the remaining pulp from the apricots, put it in a blender and add sugar to taste. Then spread it onto some wax paper out in the sun. If it’s really hot outside, it will probably only take a few hours or even an entire day. I used the jars of nectar to hold down the waxed paper.