Here's the Best Way to Peel Peaches for All Your Summer Desserts (2024)

• Food & Cooking
• Recipes
• Ingredients
• Fruit

Enjoying a ripe peach as a snack is easy—you simply take a bite and enjoy. But what about peeling peaches to use in pies, cobblers, and crumbles? That's also easy, assuming you know the right technique. A vegetable peeler might seem like the most logical tool for the job, but it's not the best or fastest way to peel peaches. While it might work for firm peaches, a ripe peach won't hold up to a peeler, and you'll lose much of the tasty flesh in the process.

Cooks who use a lot of peaches know that you don't need any tool to peel them—your fingers are best. In our step-by-step guide, we'll show you how easy the process is—and also teach you how to cut a peach, whether you have peeled it or not.

Prep Steps Before Peeling

There are three simple prep steps to ensure you are ready to get peeling.

• First, bring a medium saucepan of water to a boil.
• Using a paring knife, score a shallow "X" in the bottom of each peach.
• Create an ice bath by filling a large bowl with ice water. This will help stop the cooking process and cool the peaches so they are easier to handle.

How to Peel Peaches

To peel peaches, follow these steps:

1. Using a slotted spoon, carefully lower each peach into the water (working in batches if necessary, adding no more than four peaches to the pot at a time).
2. Boil just until the skins start to soften and separate where the peach was scored, about 30 seconds to a minute.
3. Use the slotted spoon to remove the peaches from the boiling water, lowering them directly into the prepared ice bath.
4. Let them cool for about a minute.
5. Now, starting where the X was scored, peel the skins back away from the peach. It should be easy enough to do using your fingertips or a paring knife and just the peel should come off.

In just a few minutes, you have perfectly peeled peaches ready for a savory salad or Martha's Peach Buckle.

How to Cut Peaches

The juicy texture of peaches can make them very slippery, so consider cutting them over a large bowl to capture all the juice—and any peach slices that get away end up in the bowl.

1. Start by holding a peeled peach in one hand and a sharp paring knife in the other. Cut the peach in half, working from end to end and straight down to the pit.
2. Twist apart the halves and remove the pit using your fingers or the tip of the knife.
3. Place the peach halves on a cutting board and slice into wedges or cubes.