How to Peel a Peach
With canning season upon us, it seemed like a good time to share this little tutorial. I was so happy to learn this new skill a few years ago. It is much easier than trying to cut the skin off a fresh peach, and saves a lot of time!
Step One
Put a large pot of water on to boil.
Once boiling, immerse the peaches in the water for about 30 seconds (this is blanching). Make sure each peach is mostly covered by the water.
Step Two
Remove with a slotted spoon or tongs (Not your hand! I was working so fast on so many things that I actually stuck my fingers in the boiling water!)
Step Three
Submerge peach in a bowl of ice cold water for about 20 seconds.
This stops the cooking and makes the peach cool enough to peel. 20 seconds is not a magic number. You can, and probably will, leave them in the water longer than that.
By all means, do more than one at a time!
If you are working on a lot of peaches the water will gradually get warmer and will need to be replaced with cool. You can also continue to add ice cubes as needed.
Step Four
Remove peach with slotted spoon or tongs and peel the skin off with your fingers or a small knife.
The skin should slip off easily. If not, repeat the process.
You should now have a nicely peeled peach. Beautiful, isn't it?
The same technique can be used to peel the skins from tomatoes. Occasionally the blanching time will need to be increased to 45 seconds or a minute for tough skinned tomatoes.
What would you do with a load of freshly peeled peaches? Cobbler? Can? Freeze? All of the above?
This post is linked to Raising Homemakers, Homemaking Link-Up and Works For Me Wednesday at We are THAT Family.
How pretty! I never knew you could skin peaches this way. You have taught well. Can’t wait for farmer’s market on Friday now!
So glad I read this today. We have a peach tree in the backyard that dumps peaches all over the ground faster than we can eat them.
Will this pretty much work for tomatoes, too? I cannot, for the life of me, get the hang of canning tomatoes, so I was thinking of freezing.
Yes, it works for tomatoes. I have frozen diced tomatoes before and they were fine for adding to soups and stews.
Have you ever roasted tomatoes? They are SO good!
Rub some olive oil on a rimmed baking sheet (or casserole dish). Place small tomatoes on the baking sheet whole or large ones can be cut in half. Fill up the baking sheet with tomatoes if possible.
Randomly place a few cloves of garlic between tomatoes.
Drizzle olive oil on top. Shake a little salt and pepper over and sprinkle on some fresh rosemary.
Place in a hot oven (about 400 degrees) for about an hour.
After they have cooled, put them in ziplock bags and store in the freezer. They are wonderful added to soups, pasta sauce, chili, etc. I mean REALLY good! I think I need to do a post about these. They are my favorite!