The Best Peach Variety To Use For Tart Cobbler

While sweet peaches can be peachy keen, their flavor profile may not adhere to your taste preferences if you are a Granny Smith girly or cranberry kind of guy. When it comes to fruit, perhaps you prefer it to be on the tart side. If this sounds like you, you're in luck. There is a certain type that will satisfy your sour tooth and help balance out the sweetness of the other ingredients in a classic peach cobbler — a red-fleshed peach.

With all the different kinds available, it can be challenging knowing how to select the perfect peaches every time, but knowing the basic difference between the three color types is an immense help. There are white-fleshed, such as the donut peach, yellow-fleshed, which are most commonly seen in grocery stores, and red-fleshed, such as the blood peach. The darker the color of the flesh of the fruit, the more acidic tasting it is, so if you're looking for something with a bite, choose a red-fleshed one.  To use them in your next cobbler, just swap out the same amount of the yellow varieties for this tart take. 

Red-fleshed peaches, such as blood peaches or Indian blood peaches, are native to southeast Asia and are believed to have been brought to Mexico by the Spanish in the 1500s. Their seeds were then carried by nomads across the southern U.S. and eventually blood peach trees were found growing in southeastern states such as Georgia and the Carolinas. They became widely recognized in the early 1800s when they were chosen to be grown in an orchard of Thomas Jefferson's Monticello plantation in Virginia. 

Blood peaches became known for their juicy, crimson flesh, dark red skin, and of course their tart taste. While this particular type helps cut the sweetness in cobblers, crisps, and any other peach recipe in which you'd use yellow-fleshed varieties, red-fleshed peaches' sour properties work well in other dishes too. 

They are great for making a chutney, which is essentially a vinegar-based fruit salsa, to top a white fish or accompany a sweeter curry dish. They also boil down nicely to create a jam or preserves, perfect to spread on a slice of sourdough bread for an extra punch of tartness. Finally, their vibrant beet-red coloring and acidic taste make them the perfect choice to add to your sweet homemade peach ice cream.