An Apple a Day

[billroper]

This is all mgucciard and marniegucciard's fault. They introduced us to an apple variety called Honeycrisp.

These are really annoyingly good apples. They are sweet. They are tart. They are juicy. The flesh tears away in chunks beneath your teeth and is not pulpy. They are everything that the overbred Red Delicious apple is not.

They also cost 2.5 times what the Red Delicious apples cost at Jewel. On the other hand, they're available at Jewel, which was a bit of a surprise, since we'd been told they were hard to find.

And on the gripping hand, I actually enjoy eating them.

So I figured I'd pass it along. Why should I be the only one buying annoyingly expensive apples?

Comments

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

Strangely enough, I saw them at the supermarket today!

[chirosinger.livejournal.com]

Yay for honeycrisps! They're Minnesota apples, developed right here at the University of Minnesota. Yummmmmmm!!!

[whl.livejournal.com]

I still contend there are good red delicious apples out there, they are just not the stereotypical shiny red ones, as I proved over months of research while we lived down the street from each other in the mid-1980s. (The White Hen Pantry was a nice walk from the building, and they had apples...)

The trick is to get the streaky ones. Those have texture (not pulpiness), juice, and sweetness, although the flavor is not overwhelming, I admit.

That having been said, I'll see if they have these at the Kroger in Oxford, MS, later today...

[jennlk]

I occasionally buy Honeycrisps, but my kids (who eat most of the apples in the house) prefer GingerGolds or *fresh* MacIntoshes. I buy Golden Delicious (which aren't related to Reds except by name) once the distributors start digging into the CCA-stored apples, as they seem to do best in storage. (Meijer has a good selection of fresh Michigan apples in the fall....)

[mplsfish.livejournal.com]

My favorite are Braeburns. Consistantly good flavor and texture. Most of the time when others tell me something is "the best" flavored apple, I disagree. We eat a lot of apples here. It is some fresh, fruity, fiber my seven year old will eat.
I agree about red delicious. I never buy those.
I may try honeycrisp just to test my theory that I have unique apple taste receptors.

[kitanzi.livejournal.com]

Well, thank you Minnesota! I love them, even at the higher price, and they're well worth it just because they get EATEN. In this household, anything that makes us happy to eat more fruits and veggies is invaluable! :)

[jrittenhouse.livejournal.com]

You were the last straw; I went out today to the store and bought some. Dayum, they're good.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

Pink Ladies are solidly the best apple variety I've encountered. The Honeycrisps I've had were similar, but not as good. Pink Ladies are full of flavor, both sweet and tart, and have an excellent texture, crisp without being hard. Unfortunately, my local stores stopped offering Pink Ladies a couple of months ago, after getting me addicted to them; Honeycrisps seemed to show up in their place. I hope it's a seasonal thing.

Right now Fujis seem to be the best apples I can buy by the bag. They're very crisp, to the point of sometimes being too hard, and not as flavorful as Pink Ladies, but still good.

[beige-alert.livejournal.com]

I've been buying apples from the farmers' market at the Milwaukee Public Market from a woman named Judy, who sells a vast and ever-changing selection of varieties. It's different every week, I usually get two or three or four different kinds, and I haven't been taking notes, so I have no idea what I've been eating. They're all good. I'm pretty sure the honeycrisps have been among them, though, and they are really good. (I think those are over $2 pound, while most of the rest she sells for $1.25/pound.) I never even liked apples until I started getting them fresh from an orchard in Kenosha.

good news for you...

[daddy-guido.livejournal.com]

honey crisps are a relatively new breed (I was told by an orchard owner last year) and are more expensive because they are somewhat less in supply than other breeds.

According to the orchard guy, they will come down in price over the next few years as trees planted in recent years begin producing more of them...