Here's The Trick To Picking The Tastiest Fruits And Vegetables
Kelly Dickerson
Mickey Davis, the produce manager at Greene Grape Provisions in Brooklyn delivered a presentation at the Brooklyn Brainery on how to pick the best produce.
To determine which peach is the best one, you really do need to get up close and personal with the whole bunch.
Here are three characteristics to consider when picking out produce.
1. The general appearance of the produce.
Every kind of fruit and vegetable has specific things you should look for, but here are a few examples:
For peaches you should look for sugar spots, like the one pictured below. Davis said that many people mistake these for bruises, but these darkened spots on a peach are places where the sun has hit the peach particularly hard and lots of sugar has collected, and it just means the peach is going to taste more sweet and delicious.
Kelly Dickerson
Kelly Dickerson
Kelly Dickerson
Kelly Dickerson
2. Timing matters.
Check to see if the type of produce you're buying is in season. Late summer and early fall is the perfect time for several kinds of fruit, but you should always check to see what's in season - it will taste better. Foodstalk has a chart that shows the best time to buy several kinds of produce in New York.
Davis also explained why some kinds of produce, like bananas, are OK to buy when they are not quite ripe. Bananas are climacteric fruits - which simply means they will continue to ripen after harvesting. Other kinds of produce, like strawberries, are nonclimacteric. That means no matter how long you wait, that green unripened strawberry that ended up in your batch will never be ready to eat.
Here's a list of which kinds of produce are climacteric or nonclimacteric, according to Postharvest Fresh.
Climacteric (will continue to ripen after picking):
- Apples
- Bananas
- Pears
- Peaches
- Plums
- Mangos
- Kiwis
- Apricots
Nonclimacteric (will NOT continue to ripen after picking):
- Most citrus
- Most berries
- Grapes
- Watermelons
- Pomegranates
- Peppers
3. Consider where the produce is coming from.
As a general rule, it's better to buy local. Ask your grocery store where they get their produce from - you may be surprised how far it travels. Places that sell produce grown nearby usually get the ripest bunch of the harvest.
Davis said location can even affect the taste of some kinds of produce. For example, the level of spiciness in certain peppers depends on where they are grown. Peppers grown in hotter, more humid places will taste spicier than those grown in cooler places.
- Mahindra XUV 3XO compact SUV launched in India starting at ₹7.49 lakh
- Markets trade firm on global rally, fresh foreign fund inflows
- Sustainable Energy Efficiency
- BenQ Zowie XL2546X review – Monitor for the serious gamers
- 9 health benefits of drinking sugarcane juice in summer