How Blanching Makes It Easier to Peel Thin-Skinned Fruits and Vegetables
When you boil any type of fruit or vegetable, it cooks from the outside (the part closest to the boiling water) in. By putting fruits or vegetables in boiling water for just a minute or two before putting them into ice water allows just the very outer part of the fruit, the part just under the skin, to become soft.
Once that happens, it becomes very easy to peel thin skins off of these fruits and vegetables; the skin will easily pull away from the very thin and very soft cooked layer.
To make it even easier to peel, use a sharp knife to cut an X in the bottoms of the food you are blanching: peaches, nectarines, apricots, tomatoes, cipponlini or pearl onions. Once you have stopped the cooking process in the ice bath, simply use a sharp paring knife to pull up the edges of the skin where you made the X and peel away.