- Hi, I'm Jerry James Stone

and you're watching a Cooking Stoned quick tip.

In today's video, I'm gonna show you

how to pick out the perfect peach.

While the most common peaches are the yellow peach

and the white peach, there's actually

over 300 different varieties in North America alone.

The yellow peach is quite tangy and

probably one that most people are used to.

The white peach, which is gaining popularity,

is a lot sweeter and has a lower acidity to it.

What's nice about peaches is that they actually

will ripen after being picked.

So, like a tomato or an apple, they continue to ripen.

Which, this is a great quality.

Now, that said, if you get one that's, you know,

the peach needs to be picked when it's mature,

it doesn't have to be ripe, it just has to be mature.

If it's not mature, then, like if it's green,

it's not gonna ripen correctly no matter what.

And it's just gonna be gross.

So you don't wanna pick up a green peach.

So, fruit that is able to ripen after being picked

is called climacteric, and, you know,

like I said, that's apples and tomatoes, and you know.

A non-climacteric fruit would be a strawberry,

which just, doesn't ripen after it's picked,

it just gets softer and mushier.

The first step in understanding if a peach is ripe or not

is understanding the color of a peach.

So, as you can see here, there's a sort of blush color

and then there's the yellow part, sort of underneath that.

Now, a lot of people think the redness, that blush color,

is what determines whether or not a peach is ripe.

But actually it's just a sunburn.

It's the part of the skin that's been exposed to the sun

when the peach was on the tree.

The part that's important is this yellow color.

Now, if it was a white peach it would be the white color.

But, you wanna make sure that that is not green,

like I said, green peaches are not mature

and they've been picked premature,

and it will not ripen correctly.

So for the other ones, you want a nice golden color.

For the white peaches, if you can see that here,

for the white peach, you want it

to be sort of like a creamy white.

The best place to determine the

ripeness of a peach is around here.

So, this, I wouldn't even bother looking there,

it's really just around this stem.

Because the stem is the part, like I said,

this blush area, the red that you see,

the area around this stem is where

the peach is least exposed to sun.

So you can kinda get a good sense of the color there.

The other thing you really want to consider

when you're picking out a peach, is the smell.

A peach should smell exactly how you want it to taste.

Now, there are some varieties that don't have a

very strong, aromatic component to them, but those

are not the kind you really find in a grocery store.

Those are really more the kind

you'd find at a farmer's market.

And so, you just wanna, when you're buying

peaches at the market, talk to the farmer.

But if you're at a grocery store, really, you know,

smell the peach, it should smell nice and tasty,

and if it doesn't, put that peach back.

Another factor when determining whether or not

a peach is the perfect one, is that, like any fruit,

it should really have a nice heft for its size.

You want it to feel heavy.

Now, the thing here, is when you're determining

whether or not stone fruit is ripe, you need to kind of,

get a sense of the give on the flesh.

Like is it squishy, is it hard?

And so the way to do that is you wanna put it

in the palm of your hand, and you just wanna

give it a nice little squeeze.

Now, you do not wanna push through with your thumb,

you're not trying to get past 2nd base here,

you're just, you know, trying to touch the peach

and get a feel for how it is without damaging it.

If you push on it with your thumb, push on it like that

with your thumb or finger, if the peach is ripe and good,

you're gonna be like "this is a great peach,"

but then you're gonna bruise it doing that.

And so when you take it home, it's just

gonna start spoiling in that area.

So you don't wanna do that.

You just wanna give it a nice squeeze.

If it's rock hard like a baseball,

then you wanna definitely leave that peach behind.

But if it has, you know, it's like a tennis ball,

it has some give to it, it's not quite ready to eat yet,

but it's pretty close.

So that one you could take home

and you'll be eating it within the week.

Now, if it has some give to it, like it, you know,

can feel that it's soft, but it doesn't necessarily mush,

that one's ready to eat immediately,

so you wanna enjoy that peach today.

Peaches that are softer than that are

just gonna bruise too easily, and you're not gonna be able

to store them for very long, so you avoid those also.

("Dio e Zingaro" by Municipale Balcanica)