Canning Mixed Tropical Fruit

I walked into the grocery store the other day and saw a large display of mangoes at seasonal prices. Personally, I did not waste much time snatching some up. After I had my fill of fresh mangoes. I decided to can a mixture of Mangoes, pineapple and papaya.


The PH of papaya is actually above 4.6 (the cut off point for safely canning in a water bath canner). Some sort of acid (such as lemon juice) has to be added. I handled this by making the syrup out of pineapple juice, rather than water.

The ratio of the different types of fruit isn't that important, but I chose to make them about equal. I used 8 mangoes, 2 pineapples, and 2 papayas. This made 10 pints.

For the syrup I used a quart of unsweetened pineapple Juice and 1 1/2 cups sugar. This is a light syrup. For a heavier syrup, the quantity of sugar could be increased. Simply mix the juice and sugar together, and bring it to a boil.

When canning fruit, if you simply mixed all of the fruit and syrup and started ladling it into the jars all together, you would probably end up with too much syrup in some jars, and not enough in others.

To solve this problem, add part of the fruit to the syrup. Leave enough room in the pan that you can still get a ladle full of syrup without the fruit getting in your way. Cook until the fruit is heated through (about 3 minutes). Use a slotted spoon to fill the jars with fruit leaving 1/2 inch headspace, and cover this with syrup.

Figuring out the processing time for my mixture was easy because when I looked up the processing times for the individual fruits, they were all the same. Pints are processed in a water bath for 15 minutes, and quarts are processed for 20 minutes.

High altitude instructions
1,001 - 3,000 feet : increase processing time by 5 minutes
3,001 - 6,000 feet : increase processing time by 10 minutes
6,001 - 8,000 feet : increase processing time by 15 minutes
8,001 - 10,000 feet : increase processing time by 20 minutes