How to Prepare a Peach

Preparing a Peach as a Snack

The first thing that you want to do is select the right kind of ripe peach. When you buy peaches at the supermarket, you need to inspect individually. Don't buy peaches that are sealed in a pack as this will prevent you from being able to use your sense of smell and your hands to check each peach for freshness. If you find a peach that has bruises, dents, nicks, or feels mushy, don't waste your money.

A fresh peach feels nice and solid, and heavier than you might have expected. This immediately tells you the water content, which is essentially the juice inside the peach. You should also smell the top part where the stem emerges. The stem area should have a strong peach scent and it is a good indication that the peach is ripe.

Washing

While the fruit on display may look clean, don't make that fatal mistake of eating it without washing it first. Numerous germs and bacteria may be sitting right on the surface. Since peaches are slightly fuzzy, these contaminants can make you ill or even sick. Rubbing your peach using your hands under running water works fine but a better method is to give the peaches a lemon juice bath.

Fill a mixing bowl full of cool water after you wash off your peaches. For every 4 cups of water add one cup of lemon juice or white vinegar and allow your peaches to sit in this bath for 7 to 10 minutes. After this, you can rinse off your peaches one last time to wash away any lemon or vinegar. Now take a paper towel and dry off your peach so that all of the water on the surface is removed.

Slicing

You'll need a wooden cutting board and a utility knife or fruit knife. You should hold the peach in one hand and make a slice (with the other hand using your knife) starting at the top of the peach and going down to the bottom. Turn the peach to the opposite side and repeat this cut so that you get an even half that can be twisted apart with little effort. Sometimes the seed inside will stick to the flesh so using the rounded top as leverage to separate them.

Use a fingernail or the edge of a spoon to pry out the peach pit and throw this away. Now you can start slicing your peach into individual slices. Slice your sections how you like but use your knife to trim away any rough meat leftover in the center. This cleans up your slices and also removes any unwanted seed particles that you don't want to eat.

Preparing a Peach for Baking and Smoothies

There are times when you want to add peach slices to pastries and fresh smoothies. The problem is that peach skin isn't always attractive when it's pulverized in a blender or baked in an oven. So you need to prepare your peach by taking off the skin quickly using a technique called blanching.

Blanching with water

Most people forget that certain veggies must be blanched before they are frozen, but in this case, blanching serves a different purpose. Start with simmering half a pot of water. Now, all you need to do is drop your peach (carefully), into the water for 35 to 45 seconds. Remove the peach using a slotted spoon and place this into a bowl full of ice cubes. The ice cubes stop the peach from cooking.

After this, the skin literally slides off the peach or can be carefully peeled. Only the outer skin comes off so there is no need to wash your peach. Once you're done, rinse off your peach without its skin and slice it up as you normally would, using a utility or fruit knife. Start by slicing it down the middle and cut around the inner pit. Carefully pry the two halves apart and remove the pit from one of the halves.

Now all that is left is to further section each of these half pieces for putting into a blender or putting into fruit-filled pastries. You can slice it into strips or have angled slices if you're planning to put these into cooked pastries since anything in a blender gets turned to paste.