The Biggest Mistake You're Making With Clingstone Peaches
Summer peaches are some of the sweetest and most refreshing fruits you could invest in at the farmers' market this year. According to MasterClass, from mid-May through October is the peachiest time to pick them, but thanks to greenhouses, we can now enjoy these fuzzy, pink, and gold fruits any time of the year.
Think of all the late-season peach cobblers, refreshing peach drinks, flavorful summer salads, and peach butter to spread all over your morning toast. Peaches can be some of the most versatile ingredients in your kitchen because you can use them for both sugary and savory dishes. And if you didn't know already, there are three main kinds of peaches you get to choose from.
The freestone, clingstone, and semi-freestone peaches all have their unique character traits, but some are easier to work with than others. Clingstones in particular are notoriously difficult because of their butter-soft insides and pit that clings to its flesh with all its might (via Masterclass). This makes trying to use them for anything but eating hard to accomplish, but there are a few chopping tricks to use if you need to utilize those fruits.
Cutting a clingstone peach
Slicing into a clingstone peach is not for the faint of heart — that pit at the center will try to hold on for dear life and you might end up making a mess in the process of removing it (via Food52). Luckily, if you're planning on turning the peach into jam or jelly, messy fruit is okay. But if you are looking for an easier way to remove the pit, there are a few tips out there.
Holly Foodmaker on Instagram advises against cutting along the natural seam of the peach. Instead, she suggests cutting perpendicular to it. In a video shared to hr page, she demonstrates wiggling the cut sections a little and, without any preamble, is able to smoothly separate the two sections of the peach. The side of the peach still maintaining a hold on the stone was then cut in half again and the pit was easily removed from the flesh.
Ginger Divine also recommends this method for cutting clingstone peaches, emphasizing how important it is to be "avoiding the crease" as you cut.
It may feel wrong to not cut across the crease in the peach, but honestly, it works so much better if you don't while cutting a clingstone. This method can also work on freestone and semi-freestone peaches, but honestly isn't necessary, the pits in those kinds of fruits tend to pop out easily without much help.