Welcome to the world of commercial fruit farming!! Peach varieties are developed these days for three things - color, size, and whether they will travel well. Taste has nothing to do with it. The problem is that they are so good at making fruit look big and beautiful. The classic varieties like the Summergrand or Elberta are typically only grown by small boutique farms because they can pretty much only be sold at fruit stands. They can’t be shipped because by the time they’ve traveled 1000+ miles to your grocery store they are a lumpy, misshapen, bruised mess. Delicious but still a lumpy, misshapen, bruised mess. Those in the know will still buy them but most people will always go for the large, blush covered monstrosity that tastes like straw.
There’s a 50-50 chance buying the supermarket peaches. They’re brought out from the back room (don’t know where they come from) and are ice cold and hard as rocks. I always try to find some that have a bit of give and let them sit on the counter for a day or two. There’s always the option of peach pie, or cobbler, or sliced with a bit of sour cream and brown sugar.
Here’s my go-to fruit cobbler recipe that can be made with just about any fruit:
(from The Perfect Recipe by Jean Anderson)
In an 8" square pan, melt 1/2 stick of butter.
Mix: 3/4 C. of flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 C. sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
Wisk into the dry ingredients 3/4 C. of milk.
Pour the batter over the melted butter and top with 2 C. cut up peaches (or other fruit) and sprinkle with 1 TB. of sugar. Bake at 350 degress about 40 minutes or till nice and brown.
I made this with fresh pitted cherries last week. Good stuff!
I planted a peach tree five years ago because I love peaches, and I wanted to have them.
Now I understand the problem. Peaches are a fickle fruit. One day the peaches are hard as rocks. The next day I have fifty pounds of peaches that have all suddenly become ripe at the same moment. The next day I have mushy rotten peaches and 10,000 yellow jackets eating them.
In my experiments I have found the following:
You must starve yourself prior to the day of heavenly peach perfection, so that you can gorge yourself on as many peaches as possible.
If you drink a lot of water after eating several pounds of peaches the water will cause the peaches to expand in your stomach in a very painful fashion.
Sometimes on the day after heavenly perfection the peaches are just slightly mushy but still incredibly good. If you gorge on peaches on that day they will ferment in your stomach and you will start getting badly drunk an hour after eating and not understand why. You will get drunker and drunker, and it is a very bad and sickening drunk.
If three causes you too vomit it smells like really bad peach scnhapps. While it’s absolutely sickening in a really strange way, fermented peach vomit still smells good.
If you pick peaches several days prior to the day of heavenly perfection and store them in a cool place like a refrigerator they will ripen slowly and they may be pretty good, but they will never achieve the heavenly perfection. This is the best you can hope for in store bought peaches.
If they are picked earlier than that they last a while but they never get great.
Peaches picked prior to perfection go down hill slower than peaches picked at perfection’s peak.
Most importantly
If you pick peaches on the day of heavenly perfection and place them directly in a ziplock bag and put them in a very cold freezer, they will retain some of the magic of the day of heavenly perfection for several months provided you never thaw them. You must peel them frozen and eat them as they thaw/melt.
Up here, we get some really nice locally grown nectarines and plums. Peaches, not so much. I wonder if that is something to do with Farmer’s preference, local tastes, or climate issues? But I guess a nectarine is just a smooth peach, so I’m not sure. Just saw some of those smushed, flat, “doughnut” peaches the other day. It just seemed like I’d be paying for the novelty rather than a real difference in flavor. I actually like nectarines better than peaches though. I make a nice plum and nectarine cobbler, sometimes I’ll add some canned peaches in heavy syrup, to the fresh nectarines and plums, I guess that’s my “secret ingredient”. A bit of clove and cinnamon…
I just ate my way through a basket of Ontario peaches and they were wonderful, juicy (drip down your arm juicy), sweet, heavenly fruit.
One of the best peach memories I have is attending a party in Athens, Georgia, and there were huge barrels of peaches all about the back yard, and though it was late afternoon/early evening, they were still warm with sunlight when one bit into them. Mmm.
Edited to add that I’ve almost given up on peaches off season. I’ve experienced the same grainy, tasteless, dry though beautiful imported peaches that others mention.
My rule is that if I can smell them when I walk past the peaches in the store they’re worth buying. If I have to pick up a peach and hold it close to my nose to pick up its smell, it’s not worth buying. It’s not foolproof, but it tends to work more often than not. But it also means that I only buy peaches for about 4 weeks in early summer.