What Are Peaches and How Can I Use Them?

Canned peaches are ripe peaches that have been peeled and pitted, then sealed in liquid and heat-processed so they keep on the shelf for a year or more. You'll find them as halves or slices, packed in a sweet sugar syrup or in fruit juice or water.

They're a kitchen workhorse for a reason. The fruit is picked and canned at peak ripeness, so a can opened in February tastes more like summer than the hard, mealy fresh peaches sold out of season.

The trade-off is texture. Canning softens the fruit, so canned peaches work best where you want tenderness rather than snap.

Nutritionally they stand on their own, separate from fresh. USDA FoodData Central lists canned peaches in heavy syrup at roughly 74 calories per ½ cup, most of that added sugar, while juice-packed or water-packed peaches run closer to the fresh fruit.

Dried peaches are fresh peaches with most of their water removed, which concentrates the sugar and turns the flesh chewy and intensely peachy. A pound of dried fruit starts as roughly five to six pounds of fresh peaches.

That is why the flavor lands so much harder than the soft summer fruit it came from.

Commercial dried peaches are usually halved and pitted, then treated with sulfur dioxide before drying. That sulfur keeps them a bright orange-gold; unsulfured peaches are safe and natural but turn a dull brown and taste a touch more caramelized.

They sit in the same family as dried apricots but run sweeter, with a deeper stone-fruit note and a softer chew.

Peach nectar is a thick, sweetened peach juice made from pureed peach flesh blended with water and a little sugar. Unlike clear apple or grape juice, it keeps the pulp, so it pours cloudy and clings to the glass.

That body is the whole point. It carries peach flavor into drinks and sauces without watering them down.

You will find it canned or in cartons near the juice aisle, often under Latin American brands like Jumex or Kern's, where nectars (néctares) are a staple. A standard can runs about 11.5 fluid ounces (340 mL).

It is shelf-stable until opened, then needs the fridge. Most nectars sit around 12 to 15 percent peach puree by volume; the rest is water, sweetener, and ascorbic acid to hold color.

Cling peach halves are clingstone peaches that have been peeled and pitted, then cut in half and packed in syrup or juice in a can or jar. The name comes from the fruit itself.

In a clingstone peach the flesh clings tightly to the pit, which makes it firm and a little stringy to eat fresh but excellent for canning.

That firmness is exactly why nearly all canned peach halves are the cling type. They hold their shape through the heat of processing where a soft freestone peach would collapse into mush.

Inside the can the smooth, cupped halves sit pit-side up in liquid, ready to drain and use. The syrup ranges from heavy (very sweet) to light or 100 percent juice, and that choice matters for how sweet your finished dish turns out.