Tangy, sweet and a little bit tart, apricots are an incredibly versatile stone fruit that can enrich a wide array of dishes, from jams and fruit butter to pastries and cookies. They can be utilized in both fresh and dried forms, combined with other ingredients in glazes and sauces, and used to garnish poultry dishes such as roast chicken, duck, lamb, and turkey.

While pickling apricots can provide a delightful companion for pork rillettes, roasting and puréeing them can create a tantalizing base for cocktails or a topping for Hawaiian shave ice. Boiling and puréeing apricots create a flavorful staple for pâte de fruit. Whether you've picked up a fresh batch from the farmers market or have a bag of dried ones from your supermarket, apricots can be a game-changer in your kitchen.

For instance, a tagine with lamb, salty olives, spices, butternut squash, and sweet apricots, curated with warm spices and a dash of honey, can create an unexpected dining experience. Apricots can also add a rich flavor to cookies, perfectly balancing with tart dried apricot pieces, salty-sweet chunks of toffee, and sweet milk chocolate.

Writer Sarah Copeland serves her lekvár, a delightful mix of preserves and fruit butter, with Hungarian pancakes. This delicious apricot concoction is also popular as a cherished gift for friends and neighbors. Similarly, mixing pureed roasted apricots and nectarines enhances the vanilla and nutmeg notes in bourbon, offering a delightful summer cocktail.

Tart apricots can also be a star of your dessert table, beautifully complementing a sweet cake served alongside tangy labneh whipped cream. Stovetop chicken braises can be significantly amplified with smoky pimentón, sweet apricots, lemon zest, crisp wine, and briny olives, as recommended by cooking instructor Molly Stevens.

Author Adeena Sussman includes sweet apricots to satiate the fiery and fresh taste in her side dish of sautéed green beans, a brilliant under-20-minute culinary wonder. Apricots can also effortlessly blend with Riesling to transform your dessert experience, with Justin Chapple suggesting it as a substitute for water in sugar-crusted confections.

Your understanding of apricots' versatility will not be complete without tasting Anoush abour, an Armenian Christmas delicacy transfused with a symphony of softened wheat berry pudding, pomegranate arils, slivered almonds, and dried apricots. And you can continue your apricot experiments in the kitchen with a range of options like desserts topped with warm apricot preserves, lamb roasts with dried apricots, and robust salads tossing dried apricots with kale, poached chicken, and walnuts.