How to Pick the Perfect Peaches

We are in the middle of peach season and now is a great time to get fresh peaches from your local farmers markets and orchards. There is so much you can do with peaches besides putting them in a pie. Peach slices are wonderful on top of soft cheese or in a salad, muddled or pureed for cocktails, and preserved for jams. But to cook with peaches, you need to know how to pick the perfect peaches.

Here is a guide for picking ripe and delicious peaches:

• Look: Ripe peaches have a "golden hue behind their reddish blush." A lighter yellow peach is a sign that it's less ripe and you don't want it. Avoid peaches where you can still see shades of green on them or have bruises, flat spots, and wrinkly skin.
• Smell: If your peach has a strong peach smell, then it's ripe and ready to eat. No smell often indicates not peach taste.
• Feel: You can tell a lot about a peach's ripeness by how it feels. Hold the peach in the palm of your hand, wrap your fingers around it and lightly squeeze. If it feels hard like a baseball, you don't want it because it was most likely picked before it was ready and won't become ripe later. If it feels like a tennis ball, it's not ripe now but shows promise for ripening later in the week. If the peach is soft and lightly bruises when you squeeze it, it's ripe and ready to be eaten immediately.

Enjoy your fresh peaches and check out new recipes for cooking with peaches in the recipes section.

Source: Watson, Molly. “Picking the Perfect Peach.” The Spruce Eats, 16 Jan. 2019, www.thespruceeats.com/how-to-pick-and-buy-peaches-2216826.