Choose Fruit
Have you ever picked rotten or bad fruit from a grocery store? It's not a pleasant feeling to bite into a rotten apple or find bruises through your pear. This article will provide you with some clear indicators of what to look for when purchasing new fruit.
Contents
Steps
- Buy in season. Fruit that comes out of season comes from farther away, and generally lacks the flavor of fruit in season.
- Use your senses to pick good fruit at the grocery store. The smell, touch and look of the fruit are all important in determining whether you get ripe, delicious fruit or sour, unripe or bland fruit.
- Check the stem of the fruit, if it has one. The stem is the natural clock of when the fruit was picked. Green stem with ripe fruit= A winner; Green stem with very hard fruit = Picked early and will possibly become mealy when ripened; Shriveled dry stem = Picked long ago lacking flavor and texture of fresh fruit.
- Search for the fruit you want until you have found it. The less popular fruits may not be in season which can mean that they will not be in the store at that time.
- Look for mold on the fruit. If you find any do not take it.
- Check if the color is what it's supposed to be. For example, don't take a green strawberry.
- Look for bruises and spots that indicate the fruit has been roughly handled and damaged.
- Smell the fruit. Some fruits have a "ripe" odor, like cantaloupe and honeydew melons. Some fruit may have a sour odor if they are beginning to spoil.
- Feel the fruit, but do so carefully. Firm fruits like apples and pears should feel firm, but peaches, plums, and other "soft" fleshed fruits should feel slightly soft. If you test it this way, do so carefully as not to damage the fruit.
- Select fruit that is in a bin or open storage box, not in bulk bags or boxes. The old saying, "One rotten apple will spoil the whole lot," is often true, and you will seldom find a large bag of fruit without at least some damaged fruit in it.
- Pick the fruit up. If it's heavy for its size, then you have successfully found yourself a good piece of fruit!
Strawberries
- Smell them. Do they smell like strawberries? Unripe or not flavoured strawberries will not have a very strong scent. Ripe, sweet strawberries smell strongly of strawberry.
- Pick ones of the right color. Strawberries should be a deep red all over. If they are a light red or have some green or yellow on them, they are not ripe and they won't taste good.
- Taste them. If the grocer allows it, always taste a sample strawberry. This is the single best way to know if you are getting decent strawberries.
- Choose the right size. Although those giant strawberries look most luscious, it's the smaller berries which can pack the most flavor punch.
- Buy them during the right season. The best season for strawberries is spring and summer. Strawberries at any other time of the year will lack flavor. Strawberries do not ripen after they are picked.
Grapes
- Look at the colors of the grapes and stems. The stems of the grapes should be beige to brown, and drying up. Green, full stems mean the grapes are not ripe and they will tend to be sour or tasteless. Also, look for a slight pale-yellow hue on green grapes, while red grapes should be deeply colored with no sign of green.
- Buy in the right season. Grapes are grown year round in different parts of the world. But, you should avoid the imported grapes from Chile during January-April. Eat U.S. grown grapes during the season of July-December.
Peaches
- Smell them. Again, if you walk by a whole bin of peaches or nectarines and don't smell anything, they will be flavorless. A peach should smell like a peach.
- Feel them. Peaches should give slightly when you squeeze them. They should not be hard as a rock.
- Look. Peaches should be yellow with good amounts of red.
- Buy in season. Peaches are in season mid-May to mid-August. You can ripen peaches in a paper bag. According to the fruit devotees at Produce For Better Health Foundation, peaches emit ethylene gas during ripening. This natural ripening hormone speeds up the process of turning those hard-as-rock peaches into sweet-as-candy delights. By putting the peaches into a loosely closed paper bag, the ethylene gas surrounds the fruits, helping with the ripening process.
Watermelon
- Hit the watermelon lightly. If it sound like a drum that watermelon has hollow heart. Hollow heart is when there are parts in the middle of the melon that are empty. Also inspect the watermelon for bruises or parts that have been smashed. Smashed parts usually make a weird texture to the watermelon that feels flaky.
- There are many varieties of watermelon and colors vary. Usually if you want a ripe watermelon choose a darker green one. Lighter green ones may not be as ripe. Remember all watermelons have one yellow area at the bottom if they have more that means the watermelon did not get enough sun light.
Tips
- Select fruit that's "in season". The modern market does import fruits from around the globe, and so the spring fruits in the northern hemisphere may be grown and harvested fresh in the southern hemisphere, but they may have traveled thousands of miles to your supermarket shelf, and may have been damaged traveling.
- Look for fruits (and vegetables) at local farmers' markets or "U-pick" farms and orchards.
Warnings
- Be aware that perfect fruit means it has probably been treated with insecticides, and may be waxed or otherwise treated to preserve it's color and texture.
- Just because the fruit is good, it doesn't mean it will be ripe!
