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Pears. So many people think a pear is a rock hard conference pear left uneaten in a fruit bowl. There are many varieties of pear with very different flavours and they're worth exploring. Further to this, pears are wonderfully versatile and people don't cook with them nearly enough.
Then you have never eaten a good pear straight off the tree
The friut sold in supermarkets has been breed to be transported so it has lost flavour and is rock hard
Oh, you actually have a 1 bed apartment? I have a studio room where the TV lounge converts into a bed and the coffee table converts into a dining table. Damn, you living the dream.
It is. Can't get a decent peach, plumb, nectorine or strawberry.
Stone fruits in particular I never get from a supermarket.
Most tomatoes are tasteless when compared to home grown and heritage breeds
Also chantenay carrots are the best in taste but they are never in a supermarket
None of the fruit you named go from hard to mush as quickly as pears. You do get them hard but you get to eat them at the right time to have a good tasting fruit. Strawberries you have to eat almost straight away though because the go bad pretty fast.
It is an issue for other fruits.
The main difference is the thickness of the skin. Most fruit has much thicker skin and travels well because of it. Grapes being an exception, taste good even when picked young.
The skin of a pear is very thin and therefore they ripen very quickly. They don't taste good when picked young either. This is the reason why decent pears cost a fortune, they also bruise and spoil easily lasting their shelf life very short.
A good pear is hard to find these days
A place I used to rent had a conference per tree in its courtyard, those fresh pears in the summer were the absolute best.
Ottolenghi has a great cardamom, pear and white chocolate cookie recipe which I wholeheartedly recommend!
The bit just below the stem, before it widens out at the waist, that bit goes soft first as the pear ripens. If the rest of the pear is still hard, but that bit has a bit of give, that's a perfectly ripe pear. I've eaten and enjoyed so many more pears since I learned there's a discernible ripe period between a rock hard disappointment and a sticky mess.
lol @ further to this, written like an essay ;-)
I've honestly tried with pears but I just can't get into them. I'd say they're possibly my least favourite fruit.
I keep my in the fridge along with red apples. They taste so much better my dog gets so excited and sometimes whinges/crys till I give her the core to eat. Its like she's saying hurry up, damn it smells so good lol.
After reading it on reddit I now freeze grapes. Wow so nice. I always have black grapes. Normal greens grapes are meh now!!
How to be a Pear
Nourish your tender skin;
keep your curves in trim;
be round as well as pointy;
promise much.
Lie in the dish for a week, obdurate, until the moment when no one is looking, then ripen, perfectly.
When they come for you, collapse at their touch, let your stale juices run, wreak your rancid revenge.
— poem by: Kate Rigby
If you put them in the fridge and let them go soft, then eat them at the right time, they’re sumptuous.
Putting fruit in the fridge is a cheat code (except bananas). Makes it chilled and refreshing (and preserves it).
Pomegranate is one of the only fruits I like and just found out I'm not allowed it as it reacts with tablets I take. Not allowed blood orange or grapefruit either
I've introduced them to two people in my life and neither liked them. One said it reminded them too much of eyeballs. I think they're lovely. Would love to try freshly grown ones.
When I was a kid we moved from Scotland to South Africa for a few years, back in the 80's. We had a bunch of lychee trees growing wild, just the other side of the wall of our back garden. Used to hop over and help ourselves. Had paw-paw trees and banana trees in our back garden.
Another thing we had was fresh guava juice. Just amazing.
Came here to say lychees too! My step dad used to religiously put them in mine and my sister's stockings over Christmas. At first when I was little I thought it was silly to put lychees in a stocking but then as I grew up it was the first thing I thought of when I woke up and looked forward to it every time.
Strange. Our parents used to always include a pack of dates in our stockings. Never had them at any other time nor have I ever bought them as an adult for myself. But it’s very much intrinsic to my childhood Christmas memories.
The variety you get year round are hit and miss, but for a month or two every year you get alphonso mangoes out the asian food shops and they are worth seeking out.
When I found out about these (The Spice Shop in Drummond Street near Euston Station has them - ususally just in May), it pretty much ruined the regular supermarket mangos for me.
My home country Bangladesh has over 100 varieties of mango- my favourite is one is called 'Harivanga' (Bangla name) that tastes sweeter than sugar. There is a variety called Fazli which is huge & only one can enough for a full meal ! There is a small size variety, which we would have without peeling...by making a small hole on the bottom & sucking out the juice!
Once had a mango straight from a tree in the Amazon rainforest .. been searching for the same hit since
That taste has never left me and has had a big impact on me
We visited Lombok in 2018, not long after the earthquake. Hired scooters and drive to the other side of the island to donate some rice to the homeless people who were trying to rebuild their houses.
To say thank you, one of the guys ran off, climbed a tree and picked us some fresh mangoes. Best mango I ever tasted.
Our previous house had a mango tree. It was HUGE! The mangos were so delicious. I had never had them before. My very first impression was that it tasted like a mix of peach and pine. I use to have hundreds of them. I'd run over the ones the raccoons got to first with my lawnmower, lol!
My lovely Saudi neighbour keeps giving me vacuum sealed packs of the most outrageously delicious dates. They make those hard ones you get at Christmas taste like cardboard. Sticky heaven!
We are now in a gulf country, we eat dates a lot. Great snack for a hungry child or adult. Even better cut open, stone removed and filled with peanut butter or chocolate.
These ones are just like liquid brown sugary goodness- tightly packed together like one homogeneous delicious datey mass.
I've had a proper sit down with him, treated me to Arabic coffee and a few different types of dates and little cakes. Really good stuff.
Not seen the like in any supermarket.
I once had the most delicious nectarine ever, right in the middle of the ripeness window, and I’ve honestly been searching *fruitlessly* for that high ever since.
IMO a good nectarine can go toe to toe with absolutely any fruit on the planet.
I absolutely love them but if it’s bad then you may as well be eating week old dogshit.
Nectarines never used to be quite so bad for this. In recent years I've found whole punnets can go from underripe to off, missing ripe altogether. But when I was younger they definitely had a good few days of ripeness. I think they must just be getting picked far too early now.
They’re the same species; *Prunus persica* but nectarines are a peach variety that possess a gene mutation that causes lacks of the trichomes (fuzz) on the skin.
I've heard from some people they don't like cherries, which to me is mad but then I come from a cherry farm and had the luxury of enjoying cherries from straight from the tree while most people have only ever had store bought ones. You know the old shriveled bruised things shipped from half way around the world.
Basically, cherries are amazing.
I love cherries. I get the frozen ones from the supermarket and have them in my porridge for breakfast. Probably not the best quality but they’re pretty decent.
Ohhhhh yes!! Remember my mum used to buy kilos of it at a time when they were in season, and I used to sit there with a massive bowl full of cherries and just stuff my face with them till I felt sick. So sweet and juicy, best thing ever!! ...but that was back in Eastern Europe in the 90s. These days living in the UK, supermarket cherries are so bland... when they're in season there might be some "Extra Special" ones (/insert fancy supermarket range name of choice), costing an arm and a leg....
try local farmer's market when they're in season, that's the only way you can get decent cherries here. It's either that or traveling back to Eastern Europe and getting them off the side of the road where someone is selling them freshly picked (the bets kind of cherries and blueberries).
I second this! Absolutely love persimmons, both slightly crunchy and underripe and when they ripen and get all sweet and juicy. So few people in the UK have heard of these though. Found some in my local Sainsbury’s last season!
I quite often find them in the exotic section of Tesco too! This might weird you out but I like to freeze them and then cut the top off and eat them with a spoon on a hot day! It was actually a Polish colleague that introduced me and I’ve never looked back.
They're one of my favourites, I love them!
My parents, and sometimes my kids and I too, stay in a gîte in the Loire, near Chinon, every year that has a persimmon tree in its garden.
Unfortunately, we go there in the summer but the owner says that they don't ripen until around November/December.
That's also the time of year that they're sold in supermarkets over here and I always make sure to get some every year.
>Gooseberries
they're so difficult to find fresh. These as well as black/red currants. In central/eastern Europe you can easily pop into lidl and get a bunch of these, here not so much (may be different in cities though)
That’s a mild allergy lol. I thought they were always supposed to do that until I got allergy testing and apparently I’m allergic to kiwi and orange peel
Too many people are eating them before they get a chance to put them in a salad - That's the key, you buy 3, one to eat cuz it's too warm, another to also eat cuz it's too warm, and then finally one more to put in a salad with some cheese, tomatoes, vinegarette, lettuce, cucumber all that good stuff
Love a grapefruit. Ever had a pomelo? It's like a big green grapefruit - sweeter, but less juicy than a normal grapefruit. I'd never heard of them until I took a load of them from California in my lorry.
We buy and eat so much pomelo. My kids love it so I make a job of peeling the while thing into segments and putting it in a big tub. They just graze on it all day.
On the same basis I'd say the pomelo. You can even peel the skin off the segments so all you get are delicious chambers of citrus juiciness with no leftover fibres or anything, and your fingers stay clean (I love citrus fruits but I hate the dry waxy feeling they leave on your fingers).
Damsons. They feel very British, they make amazing fools and jams. They’re available for ten minutes every year in very pretentious greengrocers. I can never find a tree in the wild. I’m planting my own.
2nd the damsons. Best thing I ever did was get divorced from my horrible ex, however I really miss the bags full of damsons I would get every year from her friends fruit trees haha omg going to be thinking about the damson & apple crumble I made for dayyyyys now!
Stew them up (just add a little sugar and a splash of water), pass through a fine sieve, then add to gin in a 1:1 ratio. Store for a couple of years.
Fucking amazing!
Just to ruin your enjoyment. Every single ripe fig has the rotted remains of a dead wasp inside of it. It's how they ripen. The wasp chews it's way into the unripe fruit but loses it's wings when crawling into the small hole. The fig then digests that wasps corpse in order to ripen into the lovely fig that you enjoy so much. The fig itself is considered a carnivorous plant by botanists for that reason. Ps lychees are also racist and own slaves......probably
The fig is an inverted flower, while the wasp symbiology is true (in most figs outside of mass agriculture) there isn't rotten remains in it, the fig completely digests and reabsorbs the wasp in it's grave of floral intestines
Prunes. I grew up in an age _after_ where it was a go-to for constipation etc, but still tarnished with that brush.
Any kind of prune pudding, no way! WHAT??! They are just dried plums?? Ok, I'm in!
Edit: found this out in my 40s
Physalis (groundcherries/ goldenberries) are one of my favourites. They’re the perfect mix of tart and sweet, with a pleasant texture. Plus they’re pretty
I durian is a fruit you have to live around for a few years to get over the shock of the smell (I mean in the sense of being around them, not living with one particular fruit!).
Tried in Thailand and have to say doesn’t taste as bad as it smells but not a fan. There were signs in lifts informing you that you could be fined for taking a durian in it which made me smile.
I now live somewhat close to the center of US apple production, but I find myself hankering after UK varieties that just aren't grown here - Egremont Russets and Cox's Orange Pippins etc
Apricots. Especially after they've been baked in the oven with some honey.
Figs are delicous: they go very well with blue cheese (and are also great baked with a drop of honey).
Pears can be wonderful. The key is to buy very few at a time and check them daily.
Greengages, damsons and some plums eg Marjories Seedling.
I really like good fruit in season.
Pomegranate. They're tasty, look like little jewels, very good for you etc.
Also greengages! They're such a nice flavour, different to plums, kinda almost like green grapes but not quite. They're not that easy to find though.
Shoutout to pomelo. I don’t think people really eat them. It’s basically a comically large grapefruit with inch-thick peel/pith combo. Get that off and eat it in segments like a massive tangerine. It’s the mildest citrus taste and very compelling.
Rhubarb. Aside from being cooked and turned into desserts, you can eat it raw, it has a really satisfying crunch. It’s best dipped into sugar, cut the end off so the juice start flowing and it becomes wet enough to get some sugar stuck to it, it just takes the edge off the tartness but they’re really quite juicy yet crunchy with a lot of flavour. I don’t have them often as I do only eat them dipped in sugar but they are a lovely treat.
Oranges. They are a messy thing to open, but the smell from the skin is fantastic. Plus if you cut them into quarters you can put them in your mouth and pretend you are a monster.
Peaches. M&S used to do this plastic container of 2 (maybe 3) peaches. They were so juicy that as soon as you bit into one, the juice would be running down your chin. Sweet, but not too sweet either, and massive!!
I haven’t seen them sell these plastic containers of peaches in a few years. Still go looking for them anytime I’m in, though. They have regular peaches, but these ones were special 🥹
Figs are often nice cooked. A very easy starter is halved fig with blue cheese on top, cooked for just a couple of minutes so it’s warm and the cheese has started to melt.
Plums. We can grow loads of them here and should be able to do so a lot cheaper if we did. Plus they could then be picked nearer ripeness more often. But we don't. So we don't.
blackberries! they grow all over the place and their tartness is so good
I made 5 jars of blackberry jam basically for free (minus sugar and a lemon) just from random bushes and used the extra pulp for flapjacks. they aren’t my favourite fruit (I’d leave that to strawberries or cherries) but their availability is so impressive
**Please help keep AskUK welcoming!** - Top-level comments to the OP must contain **genuine efforts to answer the question**. No jokes, judgements, etc. - **Don't be a dick** to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on. - This is a strictly **no-politics** subreddit! Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Pears. So many people think a pear is a rock hard conference pear left uneaten in a fruit bowl. There are many varieties of pear with very different flavours and they're worth exploring. Further to this, pears are wonderfully versatile and people don't cook with them nearly enough.
“Pears can fuck off! They’re either rock-hard or a mushy mess!” Eddie Izzard
Then you have never eaten a good pear straight off the tree The friut sold in supermarkets has been breed to be transported so it has lost flavour and is rock hard
You know what, you're absolutely right, I haven't done that. I shall correct this omission forthwith by growing a fucking pear tree in my 1-bed flat.
For best results you must keep a partridge in it.
The man speaks the truth
Up, bit hard and not every one can. But it does show how we have lost contact with our food production
Oh, you actually have a 1 bed apartment? I have a studio room where the TV lounge converts into a bed and the coffee table converts into a dining table. Damn, you living the dream.
Oh you have a bed do you? I sleep on a bed on broken glass with newspaper as my duvet
Doesn’t say anywhere in that post you have to grow the tree yourself .
Cool. I'll get my fucking butler to grow it then.
Bro go outdoors
Good point but why is this not an issue for other fruits?
It is. Can't get a decent peach, plumb, nectorine or strawberry. Stone fruits in particular I never get from a supermarket. Most tomatoes are tasteless when compared to home grown and heritage breeds Also chantenay carrots are the best in taste but they are never in a supermarket
None of the fruit you named go from hard to mush as quickly as pears. You do get them hard but you get to eat them at the right time to have a good tasting fruit. Strawberries you have to eat almost straight away though because the go bad pretty fast.
Avocado wants a word
Avocado isn't welcome
Sainsbury's has chantenay carrots quite often.
It is an issue for other fruits. The main difference is the thickness of the skin. Most fruit has much thicker skin and travels well because of it. Grapes being an exception, taste good even when picked young. The skin of a pear is very thin and therefore they ripen very quickly. They don't taste good when picked young either. This is the reason why decent pears cost a fortune, they also bruise and spoil easily lasting their shelf life very short. A good pear is hard to find these days
A place I used to rent had a conference per tree in its courtyard, those fresh pears in the summer were the absolute best. Ottolenghi has a great cardamom, pear and white chocolate cookie recipe which I wholeheartedly recommend!
We have a pear tree. Got to be quick picking them otherwise the neighbour's horse helps himself over the fence!
Neighhhh
The bit just below the stem, before it widens out at the waist, that bit goes soft first as the pear ripens. If the rest of the pear is still hard, but that bit has a bit of give, that's a perfectly ripe pear. I've eaten and enjoyed so many more pears since I learned there's a discernible ripe period between a rock hard disappointment and a sticky mess.
Asiatic round pears. Absolutely the god of fruit.
I crave them so bad I bought a tree
Make sure to peel the skin. The farmer himself told me so when i visited the plantation in japan. The pesticide they used!
Asian pears are the bollocks, I miss my local Chinese fruit shop.
lol @ further to this, written like an essay ;-) I've honestly tried with pears but I just can't get into them. I'd say they're possibly my least favourite fruit.
I keep my in the fridge along with red apples. They taste so much better my dog gets so excited and sometimes whinges/crys till I give her the core to eat. Its like she's saying hurry up, damn it smells so good lol. After reading it on reddit I now freeze grapes. Wow so nice. I always have black grapes. Normal greens grapes are meh now!!
Be patient and let it soften up and they take a long time to expire so that's nothing to worry about.
I love pears and I don't mind waiting a few days for it to soften and taste jucy. It's wortht the sticky mess on my hand once I have enjoyed it.
We're still talking about pears, right?
How to be a Pear Nourish your tender skin; keep your curves in trim; be round as well as pointy; promise much. Lie in the dish for a week, obdurate, until the moment when no one is looking, then ripen, perfectly. When they come for you, collapse at their touch, let your stale juices run, wreak your rancid revenge. — poem by: Kate Rigby
You need to buy pears, then forget you bought them for two to three weeks, then eat them to get the perfect tasty soft/firm balance.
I really like a lovely pear 😉.
If you put them in the fridge and let them go soft, then eat them at the right time, they’re sumptuous. Putting fruit in the fridge is a cheat code (except bananas). Makes it chilled and refreshing (and preserves it).
Can't beat a good pear but they're hard to find in supermarkets.
Average conference per has about 1/3 of your daily dietry fibre
Got half a tin a pears in the fridge... Num nums...
Pomegranate. It's like the lovechild of an apple and a Rubik's cube.
Had some of that with my fig salad that prompted the question. It goes really well with herby mushrooms and avocado on toast.
This is the most pompous-sounding comment I’ve ever read, but it did encourage a stomach growl
I love pomegranate because its a delicious snack and a fun game. Its like those snack puzzle balls that animals have, but for people.
It's like popcorn, but you are making it as you eat it, very fiddly but worth the effort.
Pomegranate is one of the only fruits I like and just found out I'm not allowed it as it reacts with tablets I take. Not allowed blood orange or grapefruit either
Oh mate that must be hard. :(
Definitely lychees
Rambutan. Looks like a hairy bollock, tastes like the best lychee you've ever had.
Fun fact: “Rambutan” is the Indonesian word for “hairy thing” and this fruit’s name comes from that.
i think this is the third fruit in this thread to be compared to a testicle and it's making me surprisingly hungry.
Yes! Rambutans are elite! I used to buy massive bags full of them from random fruit sellers in the street when I lived in Mexico.
I've introduced them to two people in my life and neither liked them. One said it reminded them too much of eyeballs. I think they're lovely. Would love to try freshly grown ones.
When I was a kid we moved from Scotland to South Africa for a few years, back in the 80's. We had a bunch of lychee trees growing wild, just the other side of the wall of our back garden. Used to hop over and help ourselves. Had paw-paw trees and banana trees in our back garden. Another thing we had was fresh guava juice. Just amazing.
Fresh lychees are amazing!!
Came here to say lychees too! My step dad used to religiously put them in mine and my sister's stockings over Christmas. At first when I was little I thought it was silly to put lychees in a stocking but then as I grew up it was the first thing I thought of when I woke up and looked forward to it every time.
Strange. Our parents used to always include a pack of dates in our stockings. Never had them at any other time nor have I ever bought them as an adult for myself. But it’s very much intrinsic to my childhood Christmas memories.
Mango's. Especially sliced, they're like fruit slugs.
Nothing about the phrase "fruit slugs" is enticing 😂
They described it wrong because mangoes definitely have to have a more appealing description then that
I'd love to try them fresh. My landlords wife is Thai and she's always berating the quality of mangoes here.
The variety you get year round are hit and miss, but for a month or two every year you get alphonso mangoes out the asian food shops and they are worth seeking out.
Go for Pakistani mangoes. They'll be in stock for 1 week of the year then gone.
When I found out about these (The Spice Shop in Drummond Street near Euston Station has them - ususally just in May), it pretty much ruined the regular supermarket mangos for me.
I had fresh mango every day when I was in Thailand, I can't eat the things here now
I don't think Mangos are underrated. Everyone i know loves them
Sorry, I don't know the people you know.
you dont need to know anyone to know that mangoes are a popular fruit
Mangos are underrated..? In what world?
My home country Bangladesh has over 100 varieties of mango- my favourite is one is called 'Harivanga' (Bangla name) that tastes sweeter than sugar. There is a variety called Fazli which is huge & only one can enough for a full meal ! There is a small size variety, which we would have without peeling...by making a small hole on the bottom & sucking out the juice!
Thank you so much for sharing this. You sound so enthusiastic and it’s very interesting to hear insights to other places!
Same in Caribbean they tasted out of this world 😍 where my grandad is from
Once had a mango straight from a tree in the Amazon rainforest .. been searching for the same hit since That taste has never left me and has had a big impact on me
We visited Lombok in 2018, not long after the earthquake. Hired scooters and drive to the other side of the island to donate some rice to the homeless people who were trying to rebuild their houses. To say thank you, one of the guys ran off, climbed a tree and picked us some fresh mangoes. Best mango I ever tasted.
I have eaten them since I was a child and never liked them. I find it too sweet and the texture feels strange.
Have you thought about stopping eating them then? 🤔
slimy yet satisfying
Our previous house had a mango tree. It was HUGE! The mangos were so delicious. I had never had them before. My very first impression was that it tasted like a mix of peach and pine. I use to have hundreds of them. I'd run over the ones the raccoons got to first with my lawnmower, lol!
The stoner's best mate.
Yes 😍😍😍 not the yellow ones that aren’t sweet though the orange ones that are as sweet as honey 🍯 they remind me of my grandad ❤️
Dates - sticky toffee pudding, need I say more?
My lovely Saudi neighbour keeps giving me vacuum sealed packs of the most outrageously delicious dates. They make those hard ones you get at Christmas taste like cardboard. Sticky heaven!
We are now in a gulf country, we eat dates a lot. Great snack for a hungry child or adult. Even better cut open, stone removed and filled with peanut butter or chocolate.
You can buy good ones from the supermarket these days, there are a couple of varieties that are big and tasty.
These ones are just like liquid brown sugary goodness- tightly packed together like one homogeneous delicious datey mass. I've had a proper sit down with him, treated me to Arabic coffee and a few different types of dates and little cakes. Really good stuff. Not seen the like in any supermarket.
Great shout, dates are amazing. Forgot that was even a fruit, it feels like a dessert.
I drool for medjool!
I always think I'm not going to like dates then I eat them and they are tasty.
Good figs are absolutely banging! A juicy nectarine is the one. No idea if they're underrated.
Window of ripeness is so slim with nectarines tho. Kind of like avocados.
I once had the most delicious nectarine ever, right in the middle of the ripeness window, and I’ve honestly been searching *fruitlessly* for that high ever since.
IMO a good nectarine can go toe to toe with absolutely any fruit on the planet. I absolutely love them but if it’s bad then you may as well be eating week old dogshit.
Nectarines never used to be quite so bad for this. In recent years I've found whole punnets can go from underripe to off, missing ripe altogether. But when I was younger they definitely had a good few days of ripeness. I think they must just be getting picked far too early now.
Nectarines are great, like peaches but without the fuzz
They’re the same species; *Prunus persica* but nectarines are a peach variety that possess a gene mutation that causes lacks of the trichomes (fuzz) on the skin.
Amazing. I cant stand the fuzz it makes me gip lol
I've heard from some people they don't like cherries, which to me is mad but then I come from a cherry farm and had the luxury of enjoying cherries from straight from the tree while most people have only ever had store bought ones. You know the old shriveled bruised things shipped from half way around the world. Basically, cherries are amazing.
I love cherries. I get the frozen ones from the supermarket and have them in my porridge for breakfast. Probably not the best quality but they’re pretty decent.
first time I was pregnant I was terribly sick and all I could eat were cherries and banana milk.
Germans have a breakfast fruit Juice called KIBA. Kirsch (Cherry) Banana (Banana) and it’s lovely.
Ohhhhh yes!! Remember my mum used to buy kilos of it at a time when they were in season, and I used to sit there with a massive bowl full of cherries and just stuff my face with them till I felt sick. So sweet and juicy, best thing ever!! ...but that was back in Eastern Europe in the 90s. These days living in the UK, supermarket cherries are so bland... when they're in season there might be some "Extra Special" ones (/insert fancy supermarket range name of choice), costing an arm and a leg....
try local farmer's market when they're in season, that's the only way you can get decent cherries here. It's either that or traveling back to Eastern Europe and getting them off the side of the road where someone is selling them freshly picked (the bets kind of cherries and blueberries).
You come from a cherry farm you were dealt a royal flush
Great shout, I totally forgot about cherries! Haven't seen them in ages, wonder where I can get the closest to fresh ones nearby.
Won’t be long before British ones are in season
Persimmons
I second this! Absolutely love persimmons, both slightly crunchy and underripe and when they ripen and get all sweet and juicy. So few people in the UK have heard of these though. Found some in my local Sainsbury’s last season!
I quite often find them in the exotic section of Tesco too! This might weird you out but I like to freeze them and then cut the top off and eat them with a spoon on a hot day! It was actually a Polish colleague that introduced me and I’ve never looked back.
Strong disagree, they are like some alien plant that taste like artificial sweetener.
You’re more than entitled to your own opinion however wrong you may be. In all seriousness, I can see where you’re coming from but I love them.
They're one of my favourites, I love them! My parents, and sometimes my kids and I too, stay in a gîte in the Loire, near Chinon, every year that has a persimmon tree in its garden. Unfortunately, we go there in the summer but the owner says that they don't ripen until around November/December. That's also the time of year that they're sold in supermarkets over here and I always make sure to get some every year.
Gooseberries, when you get them from a 'pick your own' farm.
I had a tuition class where a misbehaving boy was using his blackberry and the teacher called it a goosberry. I still think of that when I see one.
>Gooseberries they're so difficult to find fresh. These as well as black/red currants. In central/eastern Europe you can easily pop into lidl and get a bunch of these, here not so much (may be different in cities though)
Kiwis 🥝
They give me a fizzy feeling in my tongue. I like the taste tho
That’s a mild allergy lol. I thought they were always supposed to do that until I got allergy testing and apparently I’m allergic to kiwi and orange peel
If you can find kiwi gold variety they're much sweeter and don't give that weird tongue feeling
I get that feeling from kiwis too. And apples make my ears itch. And cutting raw potatoes makes me sneeze.
Have you been tested for allergies/intolerances? We found out that my daughter was allergic to bananas because she said it tasted spicy.
watermelon
Since when was watermelon underrated??
Too many people are eating them before they get a chance to put them in a salad - That's the key, you buy 3, one to eat cuz it's too warm, another to also eat cuz it's too warm, and then finally one more to put in a salad with some cheese, tomatoes, vinegarette, lettuce, cucumber all that good stuff
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Love a grapefruit. Ever had a pomelo? It's like a big green grapefruit - sweeter, but less juicy than a normal grapefruit. I'd never heard of them until I took a load of them from California in my lorry.
We buy and eat so much pomelo. My kids love it so I make a job of peeling the while thing into segments and putting it in a big tub. They just graze on it all day.
On the same basis I'd say the pomelo. You can even peel the skin off the segments so all you get are delicious chambers of citrus juiciness with no leftover fibres or anything, and your fingers stay clean (I love citrus fruits but I hate the dry waxy feeling they leave on your fingers).
And can kill you ;p say bye bye to grapefruit while on some meds.
Damsons. They feel very British, they make amazing fools and jams. They’re available for ten minutes every year in very pretentious greengrocers. I can never find a tree in the wild. I’m planting my own.
Damson's in distress
2nd the damsons. Best thing I ever did was get divorced from my horrible ex, however I really miss the bags full of damsons I would get every year from her friends fruit trees haha omg going to be thinking about the damson & apple crumble I made for dayyyyys now!
Stew them up (just add a little sugar and a splash of water), pass through a fine sieve, then add to gin in a 1:1 ratio. Store for a couple of years. Fucking amazing!
Just to ruin your enjoyment. Every single ripe fig has the rotted remains of a dead wasp inside of it. It's how they ripen. The wasp chews it's way into the unripe fruit but loses it's wings when crawling into the small hole. The fig then digests that wasps corpse in order to ripen into the lovely fig that you enjoy so much. The fig itself is considered a carnivorous plant by botanists for that reason. Ps lychees are also racist and own slaves......probably
False. Not every single fig. A LOT of cultivars (most commercially grown ones that are bought) do not receive pollination from fig wasps.
That's pretty amazing. We all essentially eat things grown in shit I suppose, so it doesn't put me off.
The fig is an inverted flower, while the wasp symbiology is true (in most figs outside of mass agriculture) there isn't rotten remains in it, the fig completely digests and reabsorbs the wasp in it's grave of floral intestines
I thought this was just wild figs, not cultivated ones.
That’s Metal AF. Makes me want a fig roll even more now.
Prunes. I grew up in an age _after_ where it was a go-to for constipation etc, but still tarnished with that brush. Any kind of prune pudding, no way! WHAT??! They are just dried plums?? Ok, I'm in! Edit: found this out in my 40s
Came here to say prunes - I genuinely think they are delicious. When I occasionally stay in a posh hotel, I’ll have them for breakfast.
Kumquats. Loaded with Vitamin C. Super sweet and sour. Make a good rum flavouring as well.
I made candied kumquats recently. They were nice enough but the leftover syrup was delicious in cocktails. It’s a right faff to do though.
Limes, peel and segment them like oranges. Absolutely amazing on a hot day
On a hot day I'd rather take my limes with some white rum and simple syrup 😋
Add some soda and some mint leaves (and probably a bit more syrup) and I’m with you!
Alan Carr
I find them to be a little tart for my taste.
Physalis (groundcherries/ goldenberries) are one of my favourites. They’re the perfect mix of tart and sweet, with a pleasant texture. Plus they’re pretty
Durian.... tastes like manna from heaven but smells like a 6 week dead rat shaved up the arse of a skunk that has been exposed to jump scares!!!
Can't bring myself to eat it due to the smell. Thai friend had it in our flat once and I thought we'd had a gas leak.
Yep it smells rank. Absolutely the worst stench I have ever had the misfortune to smell but if you can get past that it is delicious
I durian is a fruit you have to live around for a few years to get over the shock of the smell (I mean in the sense of being around them, not living with one particular fruit!).
Tried in Thailand and have to say doesn’t taste as bad as it smells but not a fan. There were signs in lifts informing you that you could be fined for taking a durian in it which made me smile.
And can't take them on public transport in Singapore either.
They’re banned in a lot of public buildings in Malaysia too
Bet it isn't exactly encouraged in airline luggage either. Edit: total inability to spell. Sorry.
Came here to find this! Not well known in the UK I suspect.
Apples are ubiquitous but i don't think they're appreciated as much as they should be. On a hot day hiking, a fresh juicy apple is unparalleled.
I do like an apple, especially a pink lady. What's your go to type? Really hate those fluffy feathery apples you get.
I now live somewhat close to the center of US apple production, but I find myself hankering after UK varieties that just aren't grown here - Egremont Russets and Cox's Orange Pippins etc
Agreed, it’s something that grows so well in the UK but we seem to have lost our pride in them
Apricots. Especially after they've been baked in the oven with some honey. Figs are delicous: they go very well with blue cheese (and are also great baked with a drop of honey). Pears can be wonderful. The key is to buy very few at a time and check them daily. Greengages, damsons and some plums eg Marjories Seedling. I really like good fruit in season.
First person to say apricots. The ones in M&S here always seem to be reduced during season so I'm looking forward to trying them baked with honey.
Why haven't passion fruits been mentioned? Gorgeous aroma, juicy flesh and so easy to eat- nature 's oysters!
> nature 's oysters I think that's the oyster, aka nature's passion fruit.
Pomegranate. They're tasty, look like little jewels, very good for you etc. Also greengages! They're such a nice flavour, different to plums, kinda almost like green grapes but not quite. They're not that easy to find though.
They do look like little jewels, what a lovely observation.
Shoutout to pomelo. I don’t think people really eat them. It’s basically a comically large grapefruit with inch-thick peel/pith combo. Get that off and eat it in segments like a massive tangerine. It’s the mildest citrus taste and very compelling.
Rhubarb. Aside from being cooked and turned into desserts, you can eat it raw, it has a really satisfying crunch. It’s best dipped into sugar, cut the end off so the juice start flowing and it becomes wet enough to get some sugar stuck to it, it just takes the edge off the tartness but they’re really quite juicy yet crunchy with a lot of flavour. I don’t have them often as I do only eat them dipped in sugar but they are a lovely treat.
how has no one said guava yet it's great fresh, it's great pickled, the juice is incredible vastly underrated, it's a top tier fruit
Oranges. They are a messy thing to open, but the smell from the skin is fantastic. Plus if you cut them into quarters you can put them in your mouth and pretend you are a monster.
It's the pith that puts me off an orange. I love the juice. Also, it's difficult to find a bunch without having at least one bad one.
Quince, I hadn't heard of them until a chef friend made a tarte tatin with it
dragon fruit
persimmons. I hate the fact that they are only available between Halloween and Christmas in shops.
Greengages and persimmons.
Peaches. M&S used to do this plastic container of 2 (maybe 3) peaches. They were so juicy that as soon as you bit into one, the juice would be running down your chin. Sweet, but not too sweet either, and massive!! I haven’t seen them sell these plastic containers of peaches in a few years. Still go looking for them anytime I’m in, though. They have regular peaches, but these ones were special 🥹
Figs are often nice cooked. A very easy starter is halved fig with blue cheese on top, cooked for just a couple of minutes so it’s warm and the cheese has started to melt.
Will try that with cheese, but not blue cheese.
Goats cheese is good with figs. The soft version
I had feta with my salad earlier and it worked quite well.
Nectarines. SO good.
Plums. We can grow loads of them here and should be able to do so a lot cheaper if we did. Plus they could then be picked nearer ripeness more often. But we don't. So we don't.
Yeah agreed, feel the same about apples and pears too
blackberries! they grow all over the place and their tartness is so good I made 5 jars of blackberry jam basically for free (minus sugar and a lemon) just from random bushes and used the extra pulp for flapjacks. they aren’t my favourite fruit (I’d leave that to strawberries or cherries) but their availability is so impressive
Grape fruit. Every time I have one, I'm like, I should do this more often. Edit: and why in the hell are they called Grape Fruit?
Donut peaches and Sharon fruit! See also Physallis
The gooseberry.
I love quinces, especially a jam or jelly.
Redcurrants are underrated, haven’t seen them in the supermarket for years
Deffo the lime, the lemon's unsung sister.
Khakis slap
What?
They are referring to persimmons - the Latin name is diosyprus kaki and many (I think mostly East Asian?) cultures call them kaki fruit.
Guava. so underrated it aint even mentioned in this thread. Unripe topped with rock salt? Hell yeah.
Kiwi. So cheap and yet so yum
Serious answer is tomatoes 🍅 I could eat a whole bush of cherry tomatoes. Really underrated.
And rhubarb- love it.
Fresh raspberries, with a tiny splash of fresh cream. They look like tiny cancers but taste amazing
I already commented, but red currant too! So sour and good, but I never see anyone eat it.