Fast fix for ripening peaches

People are STILL hitting up two of my early posts on possibilities for improving spongy, underperforming peaches that don’t ripen properly even after being left out on a countertop in a paper bag for a day or so (the best-known strategy).

My recommendation back then was first of all to try to buy local or US produce because under-ripened imported fruits are heat-treated at Customs, which disrupts their potential for ripening naturally off the tree or for keeping well.

If your only options for fresh peaches and nectarines are supermarket fruit shipped long-distance, and the produce you get doesn’t ripen on its own within a day or so at room temperature, even though the color’s right, my next suggestion was to cut up the fruit, leaving the skin on, and microwaving them with a little sugar and lemon juice. What you’d get wouldn’t be full-on raw, fresh peaches magically fulfilled to the height of the season–they’d be cooked, suitable maybe for peach jam, and they’d be tolerable, not exquisite, but it was better than having to throw them out in disappointment.

Neither the paper bag scheme nor the microwave scheme produce particularly stellar results with spongy peaches. Also, even though it may work, a 24-hour wait isn’t terrible but it isn’t particularly fast either.

Back then I thought the old Victorian-era trick of cutting up fresh strawberries and sprinkling a spoonful of sugar on them, then letting them sit out a bit to macerate–ten minutes? half an hour? who knows–wasn’t working on the spongy peaches. And maybe it wasn’t, or maybe I just wasn’t waiting long enough (ten minutes might not have been enough). But with domestic underripe peaches that aren’t rock-hard, it does seem to improve them quickly without cooking them.

The sugar draws out some of the juices to the surface but it also seems to enhance the color and perhaps creates a bit of conversion to riper flavor within the fruit itself.

Caveat: the peaches I bought yesterday were US peaches, and they had a tinge of aroma to them. They’re not rock-hard after sitting out on an admittedly warm counter near a window overnight, and they’re not hideously spongy and flavorless like the ones I bought when I was really upset about it in the original post. But they’re not really going sublime on their own either, or at least not as fast as I thought they should. Given their high color when I bought them (which used to be the other main signal for ripening and flavor potential), I wasn’t happy to find that they weren’t ready yet this morning.

I took the most yielding one, washed it, sliced it up in a bowl and took a bite–underripe, tart without the sweet (at least there was some tartness, though) and that hard yellow that isn’t really peachy yet. Potential, perhaps, but I’m impatient, as everyone knows.

So I dusted on a little sugar, turned the slices in it to get some contact, and waited about 10 minutes. Which may not be enough to see anything obvious, but it did make the slices noticeably juicier and they also seemed a little sweeter than the amount of sugar would account for. Not perfect, but not bad.

Half a guess based on the success of my faux-sour cherries experiment and last year’s nectarine sorbet (which I did again just last week):

If your peaches are really not tart either, just dull, you might try either a squeeze of lemon, or preferably, if you have it, a light dusting of citric acid powder along with the sugar. Citric acid will give them tartness that goes with their own flavors, so you don’t end up with something that tastes specifically like you added lemon. Let them sit a while and see what happens–take a sample taste and if it’s good, eat them, and if not, you can always go ahead and microwave them.