How to Blanch and Peel Peaches

It’s peach season! There are so many delicious things you can make with peaches, like my Peach Blueberry Crumble Ice Cream! But almost all recipes require that you peel the peaches. Today I’m going to show you a quick, easy way to do this that doesn’t even require a peeler. You will be left with gorgeous, shiny peaches, all ready to go in your favorite peach dessert.

The first step is choosing your peaches. If your peaches are not ripe, this method will not work as well. Once peaches are picked, they may need to ripen more at home. Just leave them on the counter, stem side down, and let them sit until they become soft to the touch and you can smell them. At that point, you can refrigerate them if you are not ready to use them right away. Peaches refrigerated before they are ripe will become mealy. My mother has a foolproof way to pick out peaches. She walks by them at the store. If she can smell them, she buys them. If she can’t, she doesn’t. Ripe peaches will be very fragrant and will “give” a little when you gently squeeze them.

After you have picked out your ripe peaches, the first step in this process is to blanch them. You do this by dropping them into boiling water for one minute. So get out a large pot, fill it about 2/3 full of water (remembering that the water level will go up when you add the peaches) and turn the burner to high. When the water is boiling, gently drop the peaches in the water. I do this one by one so as to minimize dangerous splashing.

Now you are only going to boil these for one minute. You don’t want to cook the peaches–just loosen the skins. So be sure to set the timer.

Either while the peaches are boiling, or beforehand, plug your sink and fill it (only about 1/4 of the way up) with cold water. Alternately, you can put cold water in a large bowl, like I did. When your minute is up, remove the peaches and immediately put them in the cold water. I use a ladle to remove each peach separately. I don’t want to pour the whole pot of boiling water into the cold water. That would make the cold water–well–not cold. Below you can see me removing a peach from the boiling water.

Now here I am putting it into my prepared bowl of cold water.

Now you can see all the lovely peaches floating in the cold water.

Wait for a few minutes until the peaches have cooled off enough to handle. Then you can pick them up, and use your thumbs to gently remove the skins. They should slide right off.

And there you have it! Beautiful peaches the easy way!