So You Have a Ton of Peaches — Here’s What to Do With Them

I mean, there are worse conundrums

Aug 17, 2025

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been in Colorado visiting family. And if there’s one summer fruit that really excites the locals, it has to be Palisade peaches.

Located on Colorado’s Western Slope, Palisade is known for its juicy, flavorful peaches that folks (OK maybe just me?!) go crazy for. So when my mom bought a box of 15 perfectly-ripe peaches, I knew that we had to get to work quickly. We dove into recipes and ultimately landed on two dishes: a new-to-us chicken recipe and a tried-and-true open-faced galette.

Here’s how we ate the peaches.

Peaches and chix

I’m still salivating just looking at this picture.

If you’ve been reading this Substack for a while, it should come as no surprise to you that NYT Cooking is a staple around here. More specifically, I adore longtime staffer Melissa Clark (who, by the way, has several excellent cookbooks—including this one that I plan to start cooking more from this fall).

Melissa’s recipes are nearly always fool-proof, easy, and big on flavor. And her gingery grilled chicken thighs with charred peaches are no exception. The marinade includes, of course, ginger, but also balsamic vinegar that gave the dish a nice, subtle tang and a tiny bit of sweetness to go with the peaches.

I had never grilled a peach before. But now that I have? I simply want to grill 100 more peaches this summer. These peaches are slathered in butter and herbs, and their flesh gets melty on the grill.

My first grilled peach but not the last.

Also, don’t skip the yogurt—the creaminess pulls everything together.

My mom and I made a feast from this recipe: asparagus, bread, and a quick pickled salad with onions, cucumbers, and tomatoes.

The best peach dessert

An imperfect crust is the mark of a perfect galette.

I believe in my bones that a free-form tart—a galette if you will—is the superior peach dessert.

For the record, this statement is really saying something because peach cobbler and peach pie are also perfect. But, I am a rustic girl at my core. I don’t like anything too fussy or over-styled, and I like food that looks like itself. So the galette ultimately wins.

My family has long made galettes, and we love peach galettes specifically. They only take a few minutes to put together and require minimal work. My mom made a pie crust from

Ina Garten

’s “Modern Comfort Food” cookbook. She used a country apple tart recipe for the filling—one she’s used for years from this cookbook.

This peach galette is perfection, particularly when topped with Demerara sugar when it’s hot out of the oven and served with Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream (the superior ice cream).

Straight up

Arguably, the best way to eat a peach is exactly as it is!

They’re aromatic, sweet, and juicy.

Few summer joys compare to biting into a ripe peach over the kitchen sink, juice running down your arm.

It’s how I plan to eat a few more of our peaches in the coming days.

Shoutout to the Rotary Club in Littleton, Colo.

Everything and anything tomato—including, yes, a tomato martini.

Do I need another cookbook? Absolutely not. Do I need

Alexis deBoschnek

’s gorgeous new cookbook “Nights and Weekends?” Absolutely.

I’ve been a reader of Alexis’ Substack for a while and have long admired her writing and recipe development style of making anything—like say, cutting a gigantic slab of salmon—approachable.

This book focuses on easy weeknight meals—music to my ears.

alexisdeboschnek