PSA: You've Probably Been Cutting Peaches the Wrong Way Your Entire Life

Peaches are juicy and messy, sticky and sweet. That’s why we enjoy them so much, and that’s why summertime peach lovers insist on eating their bounty over the kitchen sink, or at the very least with a napkin. And while peaches are spectacular as-is, it’s an injustice to enjoy peach season without a peach cobbler, salad, or ice cream. Additionally, should your peaches sit on the counter a little too long, utilizing overripe peaches in a recipe is the best way to prevent peach waste. 

Simply put, despite the mess of flesh and nectar, cutting peaches is inevitable—but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement. 

The peach’s most noticeable visual feature is, of course, its suture—this line gives peaches and other stone fruits their unique shape and immediately draws your eye. However, slicing a peach along this line is frustrating and counterproductive: the incisions along the pit end up jagged, and removing the area around the stem end now requires multiple cuts. 

Fortunately, there is a better way—a simpler way that renders clingstone pits effortlessly separate from the flesh and streamlines removing the circle around the stem end that you’d rather not eat. Recipe developer and author of “How to Eat Your Feelings” Holly Haines shared her trick for cutting peaches on Instagram, and after trying it out for myself, I’m ready to use the method for the rest of my life (and telling all my fellow peach lovers to give it a try as well). All you have to do is approach cutting the peach from a different angle: 

How to Cut Peaches (The Better Way) 

1. Rinse your peach off and pat it dry. 
2. Using a paring knife, cut into your peach perpendicular to the suture (the part that looks like a butt). Hold the knife with your dominant hand and rotate the peach to the left or right with your non-dominant hand. 
3. Wiggle the cut halves so they glide apart. To seamlessly remove the pit, the flesh down the middle and wiggle the quarters — even the clingiest stone will fall right out. 

This method will work with any stone fruit with a clinging pit (nectarines, plums, and apricots are all fair game here). And if you don’t want to make a second cut, you can even pluck the pit directly from the fruit with a little effort.