Best Fruit Poll.

a native Hawaiian showed me a rad trick: slice the mango thinly, then marinate in soy sauce in the fridge for a half-hour or so, it's pretty darn good

i love hearing about fruit mystical experiences. i can't think of another food that inspires quite the same...

ooh yeah that's like the watermelon/salt/chili powder thing

xp!

When I was a kid we used to love going into the woods and picking wild elderberries, eating them by the handfuls. I don't know how many people here have tried them. They are only a little sweet, but have a deep earthy flavor. They grow throughout the northeast in semi-shaded areas.

After we picked them my mom would make elderberry pancakes for us.

Hey cat, I didn't live in New Jersey but in Western NY! We were happy to share everything with our neighbors. My father grew so much stuff that we ended up giving lots of everything away

https://www.ediblewildfood.com/images/thimbleberry-pictures/rubus-parviflorus-berries.jpg

Thimbleberry was a cool find when I was a kid in the forests of Northern California... you never saw very many so it was always a treat to discover a fat red ripe one

https://www.juneauempire.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/31742971_web1_berry-picking-Vivian-.jpg

Ditto for the lowly salmonberry! Like a giant fat blackberry but bright orange, they grow all over the coastal northwest rain forests

The cool thing about fresh mangoes: you can eat them with the skin. Try it if you get the chance.
One shop here sells some mini-mangoes from Colombia. They're stupidly expensive, pale yellow, thin-skinned, you could grab 2-3 in your hand, and they're frankly amazing.
Some of the best mangoes I ever had were sold to me by a grandmother in a village in Andalusia. Otherworldly as others have said. I voted mango.

I've forgotten how good raspberries are, since they're on the pricier side. They're so light but creamy, with a punch of flavor.

in the order if which i would eat them if they were all in front of me and a perfect 10/10 version of each specemin:

1 - Grapefruit - pink, i eat about two a day, sometimes three in the summer when my grapefruit tree is producing like crazy. i feel so good after eating one, always calms my stomach.
2 - Mango - a good mango, fun to eat and sweeter than candy (others otm about dried mango too)
3 - Honeydew - might be the hardest fruit to find a 10/10 version of, but when you get one it's hard to beat
4 - Cherry - mt rainer or the super deep red ones are the best, super fun to eat too
5 - Peach - i could go nectarine as well but peach barely gets the nod due to it being easier to eat (the fruit doesnt stick to the seed)

I like that framing, I would go with peach/pear/blueberry/strawb/apple with those criteria

in conclusion, pears (perfect, ripe pears) are being neglected here

Everyone sleeping on plums in the stone fruit face-off. Nectarines have the above ^^ problem. Peaches have got the fuzz. Plums, have got the most beautiful colour of all the fruits inside and out, slightly smaller so you can pack a few of them away in one sitting, explode in your mouth without the juices dripping all over your nice white shirt.

plums > nectarines > peaches. Based on the Peach stanning itt, I'll chalk my peach opinion up to a supbar Australian variant.

Worth stating: Peaches, even the apparently subpar ones available to me, are still great; as are all fruits large and small.

I know it’s been stated that including chili peppers in this was a lateral move that distorts the poll but I immediately voted for them as soon as I saw that option because not only do I use them and their ground-up bits in my day to day cooking, they can also be delicious eaten as if they were a fruit, with all of the wonderful fiber benefits AND a kick

Blackberries and raspberries are wonderful in their own right because if you find anything that looks like them out in the wild, they’re guaranteed safe to eat (there are no poisonous berries that look like them, I learned this from a survival manual I made my parents buy me at a national park gift shop a hundred years ago)

I love peaches, but maybe I said this already, the peaches I now see in grocery stores are not very juicy, and the fruit doesn't stick to the pit, it's dry, and it is not begging you to tear it off from the pit while spilling juice like I remember

as far as poinonous berries go, don't mistake deadly nightshade for elderberries! Those are similar-looking but bigger berries

My favorite horse Frosty, cared for by our next door neighbor, who I fell off of in 7th grade causing me to break my arm and who I loved, ended up eating deadly nightshade berries across the fence, and he died

RIP Frosty

. . ."the fruit doesn't stick to the pit". . .

those are the serious eating peaches! the lesser eating peach is called "cling" for a reason. it is more a canning variety

dang, sorry for your Frostly loss Dan S.

i could go nectarine as well but peach barely gets the nod due to it being easier to eat (the fruit doesnt stick to the seed)

The method I've used to cut up stone fruits has been pretty reliable, provided that the fruit is just the right ripeness. Cut in half along the butt crack around the pit, then grab onto both halves and twist in opposite directions. Whichever half has the stone, cut in half again, and twist again; repeat again until you have eighths. (If it's overripe, the skin will most twist off the flesh.)

Stop the count, I’m too sad about Frosty.

The method I've used to cut up stone fruits has been pretty reliable, provided that the fruit is just the right ripeness. Cut in half along the butt crack around the pit, then grab onto both halves and twist in opposite directions. Whichever half has the stone, cut in half again, and twist again; repeat again until you have eighths. (If it's overripe, the skin will most twist off the flesh.)

― Muol Deng (Leee), Tuesday, October 1, 2024 7:18 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

yes this is great and its always a one of those small moments of anxiety just before where you have no idea whats gonna happen and when it goes your way its elation and when it doesnt... massive disappointment

Apples probably the true winner of this poll but for me, pineapple is what I'm always gonna go for first when presented with an assortment of cut fruit.

Nectarines beat peaches because no hairy skin

Nectarines beat peaches because no hairy skin

I'll say it again

Wtf, no persimmon option? No physalis???

Switched to a breakfast wherein I stir blueberries and raspberries into cinnamon'd and nutmeg'd porridge, and it's heavenly, so I'd vote those...

...but the best fruit is the blackberries you pick yourself

Wait hang on, not only is the LORD OWNED FIG not an option but nobody has mentioned it yet. Delete ILX

I thought we had all fallen, but it sounds like imago is still in that garden

Plenty of fig mentions, but no fig option in the poll.

Voting Cherries.

For me fruit must come with its juice. For the most part.

Kind of spoilt as a child by having access to incredible Mangoes, Papaya and avocados which are such nothing when they make it to Europe. I can't stand looking at what's available here. Fuck this avocado on toast bollocks.

Europe is shitty for fruit unless its put into something or is made into juice. Besides maybe pears, which has a nice juice. Apples have to be in a pie or an apple Danish. Truly awful on this its own.

I mostly eat banana. Its the UK - shit life.

But Cherries are fantastic, the one discovery. Problem is I don't have access to a good market stall so supermarket ones are variable, all coming in awful plastic packaging.

Fuck this avocado on toast bollocks.

stoked 4 ur daily mail column

xps fig offs peach

Fuck this avocado on toast bollocks.

stoked 4 ur daily mail column

― imago, Wednesday, 2 October 2024 bookmarkflaglink

Didn't say this was the cause of all your problems. Just that your tastes suck.

grapes are the most important fruit

I try not to have fruit in the house that might poison my idiot whippet, so no grapes or currants.

Seasonal Kent cherries are fabulous and very expensive, so Borough Market in July is your best bet, J.

Grapes and strawberries vary too widely - sometimes they go bad overnight or start out flavorless.

Apples are the winner IMO - consistently good within the type you prefer, rarely end up a wasted purchase because they sucked. I was digging some kind of honeycrisp hybrid this summer, a nice sharp bite but better texture.

Second best are some kinds of grape/cherry tomatoes, they’re called Flavor Bombs or something and I could eat ten pounds at once given the chance.

Yellow and gold cherry tomatoes are the best!

Thanks Suzy, I forget Borough market.

Tomatoes might win if we are including savory uses. I eat massive caprese salads for dinner ever year during the season.

For fruit as sweet treat, nothing beats ice cream I make from strawberries I picked from our CSA.

Peaches are so good, a real contender at their peak, but their peak is limited and hard to find ime.

I'm not voting, because I dispute the premise: part of what makes fruit great is that it has a season and looking forward to the next one is part of the joy.

In my twenties I developed an allergy to the pit/surrounding areas of stone fruits so I have to cut them up before eating. Really miss just being able to take a bite out of a whole stone fruit. I don’t enjoy the whole sensual juice dribbling thing people foam at the mouth about tho

not really invested in this poll since my favorite fruits aren't on this BUT

popping in to say that if you live in pawpaw territory, in September do a search on fb marketplace or craigslist or whatever and see if anybody is selling pawpaws locally

or see if there's a pawpaw festival near you (again, unfortunately fb is the best place to look)

they only fruit in september so the window is small... and you might be able to still catch some!

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/db/Asimina_triloba_range_map_1.png/2560px-Asimina_triloba_range_map_1.png

a divine fruit, imo

if we're talking regional specialty fruits then I am all about the thimbleberry

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubus_parviflorus

grapes are the most important fruit

hard agreement

if we're talking regional specialty fruits then I am all about the thimbleberry

I posted a photo upthread!

I go through at least two pineapples weekly, so they're the clear winner.

I'm also big on grapes, honeydew melon, mandarin oranges, cranberries (particularly in the form of Craisins).

A large number of fruits that I used to enjoy just make me fart now. Or maybe they always made me fart and I only recently put two and two together. But goodbye to most stone fruits, watermelon, apples, blackberries.

Blueberries are good, but I'm always afraid I'll get a moldy one, so I rarely buy them.

My wife and I got really into Outshine Creamy Coconut Fruit Bars this summer, which led us to want to try actual coconuts. I ordered special tools from Amazon to pry them open. It turned out to still be a pain in the ass to open them. Also, they are very highly caloric for even a small serving of raw coconut. And not taking all that into account, it's mostly just sorta dry. I still enjoy a few toasted coconut flakes as a dessert topper though.

What are people's go-to fruits during the winter?

clementines

the "feel good" factor from citrus still takes me aback from time to time