Apricots are some of the most delicious fruit you can ever eat, especially when they are eaten at the perfect ripeness! Apricots are climacteric fruit, which allows them to be harvest unripe (but having reached a certain maturity stage), shipped hard to help avoid any injuries during transport, and then can ripen on the produce display or at home on your counter! This post is all about how to select and store apricots in order to be able to enjoy them to their fullest.
(This post is an excerpt from The Produce Nerd’s Grocery Guide. You can learn more about the Grocery Guide, which covers this information for 55 different produce items, with input from 26 crop-specific companies HERE.)
What to look for when picking the best quality apricots?
- You should look at the skin color of the fruit and select fruit that has no green color (the green changes to yellow/orange as the fruit ripens), and select based on the firmness.
- If you want apricots to eat right away, pick soft apricots that are ripe and ready-to-eat or if you want to buy a few extra to ripen at home, you can buy them a little harder. They will ripen quickly on the counter.
Common issues to avoid when selecting apricots?
- Bruising
- Pathogen growth (rot is a common occurrence and can be seen as brown spots on the exterior of the fruit)
What is the best way to store apricots at home?
- You should store them on the counter to ripen and then in the fridge once they reach the desired ripeness (firmness).
What is your favorite way to eat and prepare apricots?
- I love eating apricots plain or with other stone fruit and bananas in a fruit bowl!
- Another way, if you have a surplus and cannot eat all of which you purchased, making an apricot jam is a delicious way to use up your apricots!
If you enjoyed this post and would like to learn more about how to select and store some of the most common produce items, I recommend checking out my Grocery Guide!
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