Freezing Peaches

The peaches are multiplying. Really, they are. Every time I gaze through the window there seems to be more of them. I know it totally absurd to think that. But after a grueling anf frustrating lovely day of making peach pie filling for the freezer, I could not face another day of submerging peaches in boiling water, dunking them into an ice bath and then PEELING them. Standing there for hours, sticky with peach juice on every exposed bit of skin and my clothes, hair, counters, floor, various and sundry people, all covered in peaches and bits of peach skin and flesh. OH.THE.HORROR! I would have begun to throw these beauties out the door (when no one was looking, of course) for the critters to munch on or throw them onto the compost pile!

But, the question still remained, NOW WHAT? I’d like to make a cobbler … down the road. Kids would like smoothies … down the road. Perhaps peach ice cream, or in a cake, or mini peach pies, oh, and peach salsa … the possibilities are endless. BUT NOT TODAY!

I could FREEZE them! But how.

If you just slice them and freeze them, you end up with a gigantic peach pop, all the slices frozen together and useless. Most importantly, I don’t want to boil them or cook them. I don’t want to peel all of them now.

The solution was, slice them, a little sugar and lemon to keep them from turning color or to be too bruised from being in the freezer. We’ll see how this pans out.

• 8 lbs ripe peaches, thoroughly washed [approx. 25 medium peaches]
• approx. 1/2 C lemon juice [about 2-3 lemons]
• approx. 1/2-2/3 C pure cane sugar

You will also need:

• 1 or 2, 1 gallon freezer bags
• baking sheets
• parchment paper
• 1 large bowl
• pairing knife and cutting board

With a sharp paring knife, cut the peach all the way around. You want to hit the pit as you’re cutting. Hold each half of the peach and gently twist in opposite directions.

The peach should easily turn and separate with a gentle pull. If it doesn’t, you may not have cut deeply enough OR the peach is not ripe enough.

The easiest way we found to cut the 1/2 of the peach with the pit still in it, is to make angled slices hitting the pit. Then, pluck each slice off. This is much easier then trying to dig out the pit. You can see my dear helper had the same thought!

In a large bowl, place the slices from 4-5 peaches, sprinkle with about 1 tablespoon of sugar and a good splash of lemon juice. It’s easier to toss them with the sugar and lemon if there isn’t an unwieldy amount of sliced peaches in the bowl.

On parchment paper lined baking sheet, line the slices up, so they are just shy of touching. Repeat all the steps until you’ve filled as many baking sheets as will fit in your freezer. For us, it was two at a time. so we repeated this a couple of times.

Set on a flat surface in your freezer and freeze until peach slices are hard.

Carefully, and quickly so they don’t thaw, remove the peaches from the parchment paper. Pack into freezer bags. I marked the date they went into the deep freeze on the bag.

Place the bags in your freezer! TA-DA!