Dana Gooley, special to wtop.com
WASHINGTON – Grilling hamburgers and hot dogs for the holiday? Why not add peaches to the mix?
Food lawyer and expert Mary Beth Albright says cooking a local variety of the seasonal fruit will not only please your taste buds, but will do wonders for the environment, as well.
How do you produce the perfect peach? Albright has a few tips:
- Buy local: Hit up your local farmers market for the finest, freshest produce out there. “If everybody ate one meal this week only from locally grown food, we would save 1.1 million barrels of oil,” says Albright, who adds that shipping and refrigeration of imported goods requires a lot of resources.
- Pick the right one: Make sure your peach is of the “freestone” variety — this means that the pit can be easily removed. In addition, check your peaches for green coloring, which means the fruit isn’t ripe enough.
- Grill it! The recipe is simple: Slice a peach in half, rub the fruit with olive oil and pop it on the grill next to your burgers. “Those sugars in that ripe peach will caramelize, a little like burnt sugar, almost like a creme brulee,” says Albright. Then, top it off with ginger shavings and a little bit of ice cream — or a little bit of cognac, too.
Get creative at your local farmer’s market this summer. For delicious desserts with minimal prep, grilled fresh fruit is the way to go.
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