Apple harvest

October 17,

Go to the farm market or your local orchard and taste all the varieties of fresh apples you can find.  Here are some of my favorites and assessment of varieties.

My sister has raved on about Honey Crisp.  Yes, they are excellent.  They are firm, sweet, tangy, crispy, delicious with a taste that hangs around, and more.  I have two trees, the first got eaten off by deer twice, even when they left other varieties and I planted the second Honey Crisp in a fence.  The deer know what is good.  The other produced apples last year.  The first is now growing inside the fence.  One online cooking guide states they loose their flavor when cooked.  If they lose flavor, it must make the air smell great.  There is finally enough Honey Crisp around that they were running a $1.69/lb sale locally.  Honey Crisp was developed by Univ. of Minnesota and can only be propagated under license.

SweeTango is the newest variety from University of Minnesota crossing Honey Crisp and Zestar.  I tasted my first SweeTango last year.  They are far and away the best apple I have ever eaten.  I purchased a whole bag and savored them one a day until gone.  There were a few available in my local Pic-n-Save this year. Any grower who has SweeTangos for sale is doing well at $2.99 a pound.  Do you cook with them?  Why bother, just eat them fresh.  Check out www.sweetango.com.

The apple I purchase most often is Gala.  Firm, crisp, good flavor and it is an all around good apple.  It was first grown in New Zealand, then later patented in the US.  (How did that happen?)  Now there are several ‘sports’ of Gala apples with slight variations.  This is an apple that is rated number 2 behind the old standard Red Delicious, which I never buy at a grocer.  A good Red Delicious is a very good apple, but when stored and sold in bags they leave something to be desired.  I have never gone wrong buying Gala apples alone or in the 3 lb bags.  I use them in cooking.

Any of the standard apples in a store with a good produce section should be good.  The ones I occasionally choose after Gala are Fuji, Braeburn, Cameo, and Jonathon. Once I found one called Ambrosia.  It was very good, but I only saw it once. If you can find a good Winesap, it is considered the best by many, but it is very late.  One of the tartest apples is Granny Smith.  I try to avoid green skinned apples for fresh eating, but it is great for cooking as demonstrated Sunday by my son Ben in one of my favorite deserts, apple crisp.  I never tire of apple crisp, warm with fresh vanilla ice cream melting over it.

As a youth, we had Transparent apples trees around.  They are very early and quickly ripened from green to yellow and fell off of the tree.  I longed for a good apple as summer came.  Transparent apples may be the earliest apple variety of the season.  That was before apples could be stored well and well before they were shipped around the world.  They make delicious apple sauce.

My Liberty apple had two apples this year.  They were good.  I never sprayed them and they had no disease and no insects.  For just a good easy apple tree to grow and enjoy, try Liberty or.  It is known for very low disease and no apple scab.

Earlier I bragged, and rightfully so, about SweeTango, but there is one apple that may rival it for over all eating quality, Red Astrachan.  My grandfather had a tree in his yard.  They are tart, maybe the tartest of eating apples, sweet, and become overripe in the shortest time of any variety, then fall from the tree.  They make delicious pies and my mother made apple sauce from them.  Seriously, they went from ripe to overripe in a day or two.  What a wonderful apple, brought to the US from Russia in the 1830’s!  If I had space, this variety would be in my yard.  It doesn’t store at all and will never be shipped.

One of the best all around cooking and eating apples is Golden Delicious.  They keep their integrity when sliced and cooked.  They maintain good flavor and store well.  If I were making apple sauce or apple juice, this would be my first choice.  I often mix apple varieties for pies, apple crisps, sauce and for juice.  Having a good portion of the apples as Golden Delicious really rounds out the taste to be full and flavorful.  Good ripe Golden Delicious apples are quite sweet with firm but not hard flesh.  Rome apples are also bragged as great cooking apples.  They look great and cook well but are far from my favorite for eating fresh.

One of my favorite ways to eat and serve apples is fried.  The recipe below is great for a morning side dish with toast and eggs.

Fried Apple Recipe.

5 apples peeled and sliced

About 1/3 stick of butter {Enough to fry the apples}

1/3 cup of sugar

1/4 cup of flour

Fry the apples in melted butter until they become translucent.  Stir in the sugar and flour until it becomes the consistency of gravy.  Serve hot.  Serves about 4 people.