2 Ways to Make Peaches and Cream

2 Ways to Make Peaches and Cream

hello this is chef john from food wishes comm with peaches and cream that's right i'm gonna show you how to make what might be the ultimate summer dessert but that's not all i'm also going to show you how not to make it since even though this recipe is perfect as is it needed absolutely no improvement i attempted to do a new variation which at the time I thought was pretty genius and was gonna be amazing but it actually ended up being none of those things so officially I'm glad I tried but unofficially I don't know what the heck I was thinking so with that let's go ahead and get started by prepping our peach and we will start that by finding the crease in the skin and we'll cut in right there until our knife hits the pit and we'll go ahead and cut all the way around as if we were doing an avocado and then hopefully just by twisting the peach will come apart into two halves and if it does like this that means it's called a freestone peach and we will go ahead and pull out the stone and by the way if it doesn't do that it's called a clingstone peach and you can still use it it's just not quite as easy but anyway we'll go ahead and remove the pit and cut a slice and I'll go ahead and trim off the skin which I guess you could leave on there if you're into something more nutritional or you just enjoy edible fur but I'm gonna go ahead and remove it and now we're not gonna do that a slice at a time I'm just doing this so I could take a taste to see exactly how sweet this is because if it is super sweet we don't have to do the sugar syrup step and this piece was good but it wasn't super super super sweet but anyway after we've tasted for ripeness and sweetness we'll go ahead and peel off the skin and slice this up and yes there is a technique where you dip these in boiling water to peel the skin off but I'm just gonna go ahead and peel the half as shown and I will go ahead and slice that up as thick as we want and then so I have a little more of a bite-sized piece I'm gonna go ahead and cut these slices in half and that's it that's exactly how we're gonna prep our peach so I went ahead and did a couple of those off-camera and once our peaches prepped we can move  on to making our simple syrup which is done by combining two part sugar with one part cold fresh water and what we'll do is set that over medium-high heat and possibly give it the whole shake a shaker and what's going to happen is this is going to start to boil and the sugar will disappear in the mixture will turn clear and once we have that bubbling we're gonna let it cook for exactly three minutes before very very carefully transferring in our peaches and like I mentioned if you taste your peach and it is just so sir be sweet then you really do not have to do this step but the ultra ripe super perfect sweet peach is a rare thing so generally for this I do recommend doing this extra step and then what we'll do once all that's been stirred together is just leave it on the heat for like one more minute or until we see our liquid start to bubble again at which point we will remove that from the heat and transfer it into a bowl to cool and that's it once those do cool down they are pretty much ready to use and then traditionally once this is cooled we would combine it with regular heavy cream to finish what is one of the greatest desserts of all time but that is not what I did because I think I'm smart and creative I decided to reinvent the wheel and what follows is my tragic attempt to make something that's already perfect better and what I did was add some heavy cream to the sauce pan along with some white sugar and I stirred that together over medium-high heat and waited for it to start to simmer and the reason I was doing all this is because I know from past experience if you cook cream for a little while with some sugar and then stir in some lemon juice once it's cold it will actually thicken up and I thought that slightly thicker little bit sweeter cream would be way better with the peaches which it was most certainly not but anyway like I said I brought that to a simmer and let it cook for about three minutes or so before pulling it off the heat at which point I went ahead and stirred in about two teaspoons of lemon juice and that's it I simply waited for both of my components to cool down a little bit before putting them together and once that happened I went ahead and use a slotted spoon to transfer some peaches into my serving glass and I used the slotted spoon because I do want a little bit of that sugar syrup in with it but not too much and then once I determined I had a perfect portion of peaches I went ahead and filled that up with my cooked cream mixture and I have to say at this point I was pretty proud of myself I was like you know what chef John you really are smart guy by heating that cream you've created something that's going to be even richer and more luxurious and hey more delicious probably and because I was so sure this was going to be fantastic I actually ended up doing four so I went ahead and wrapped those up and popped him in the fridge until they were thoroughly chilled and while I was waiting I decided to take all the rest of the leftover juices and add that to a pan and reduce it down until it thickened up a little bit since I thought that would make a beautiful drizzle for the top so that's what I did and once that had reduced by about half I went ahead and turn off the heat and simply let it cool oh and if you're looking for an insanely delicious ice cream topping keep this little trick in mind but anyway once my peaches and creams were chilled I went ahead and pulled one out and went ahead and spooned over some of our now chilled peach syrup which as I was doing I thought to myself that does not look that great which in the movie business is known as foreshadowing but anyway I syrup the top and grabbed a spoon to dig in and was thoroughly thoroughly disappointed okay it didn't look that bad it actually looked pretty good but my idea for making the cream thicker and slightly sweeter was not a good one okay not only did it kind of clash texturally with the peaches but also the fact that that cream had sugar in it really sort of took away the natural sweetness of the peach so to summarize by trying to do more we ended up with less which in hindsight seems obvious now and I really should have known but for some reason the universe forced me to go through this exercise too I guess I don't know build character and of course since there's no accounting for taste some of you might actually like this but compared to the classic approach I did not and I officially deem this recipe a food wish failure but as you know we never let the food win so I whipped up another batch of peaches which actually ended up being even sweeter and more orange but I did the same thing with the simple syrup and I used a slotted spoon to transfer some into this bowl where we are gonna add an equal amount of pure heavy cream not cooked not sweetened just good old-fashioned cold heavy cream and that my friends is how you actually make peaches and cream but don't try to eat it quite yet this stuff is way better if we wrap it up and pop in the fridge for a few hours to get really cold and also to give that cream time to absorb all those beautiful peach flavors at which point then we can pull it out and possibly drizzle over a little that optional syrup and as I finish this up I was already feeling a lot better in my earlier frustration faded away replaced by anticipation for how amazing this was going to be and it really really was alright that combination between the sweet sticky peaches and the thinner unsweetened but still rich heavy cream really is what makes this dessert so extraordinary and by the way no we didn't forget any ingredients to me this is not something you want to add things like cinnamon or vanilla - okay for this I really don't think we want anything else getting in the way but of course having said that you decide I mean you are for all the queen of your peaches and cream and whatever pleases your highness is fine with us but anyway that's it peaches and cream I think we all learned something here today which is if you're going to do a video to improve a recipe pick a recipe that actually needs improving you know like cauliflower pizza crust and not an iconic already perfect recipe like peaches and cream so lesson learned and in keeping with this simple theme of this recipe I will finish up by simply saying I really do hope you give this a try .

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