You Call That Ripe?
There is no such thing as a succinct or universal definition of ripe. Describing fruit that is ready to eat range from the poetic (hour to hour, we ripe and ripe, and then from hour to hour, we rot and rot) to the technical (brix levels). Russ Parsons, the immensely entertaining and informative food writer for the Los Angeles Times, explains it best by making a distinction between mature and ripe produce. Mature fruit doesn’t need to be edible coming off the vine or the branch – it will eventually ripen, but if you pick an immature fruit, it will never ripen.
Bananas, tomatoes don’t need to be ripe when they are picked but they do need to have reached maturity. Berries will never ripen off the vine and like a frat boy graduated off of campus, it is all about the deterioration.
On the list of bad things in this world, biting into a piece of fruit that is crisp when it should be soft or vise versa is a small toll to pay in the human experience, but it is still disappointing. To help fruit lovers avoid the sting of underwhelming produce, here is a list of produce you will find in the grocery or markets at this time of year that will ripen outside of the fields, in the kitchen.
Apricots
Apples
Avocados
Cantaloupes – (But not watermelons). Since all melons are principally water, always chooses the heaviest melon you can find.
Figs
Nectarines
Peaches
Plums and Pluots
Tomatoes
List culled from Mr. Parsons’ outstanding book, How to Pick a Peach, and other sources:
1 - Is one corn chip a Dorito or Doritos?
1 comments:
Saucyman,
I remember an experience, years ago, when I was living in Salem, Oregon, the heart of Willamette Valley fruit country, of going to pick peaches at the height of the season. As we stumbled about the orchard, peaches dropped from the trees and I had my first taste of a windfall peach. To this day I have never tasted such an elusive perfection: pure peach sugars, the flesh of the fruit instantly transformed into ambrosial juice with each bite. I understood something about ripeness that has never left me. There was that intimacy of "being there" just as the tree yielded its fruit to the earth.
I have heard people recount similar experiences with mango and banana in Mexico.
Certainly wind-fall fruit is good for nothing other than such immediate experiences. The fruit is too ripe to cook or transport. It will rot within hours. Yet, in the moment,it is a rare window into ripeness, one worth seeking out.
Charlie Seluzicki
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