It’s always the same, a couple of hours after you get home from the grocery store, you decide it’s time to eat that avocado. But it’s not ‘ripe and ready to eat’ as the packaging claims, it’s rock solid. Then you ruin it just trying to cut the thing. So, you reach for the mango instead.
But your mango is a mess. You pick it up and your fingers seem to squish right through it. What a waste of money. And what a disappointed stomach! The charts in this post will show you how to choose fresh, perfectly ripe fruits and vegetables every time.
You can feel confident in choosing perfectly ripe fruit and vegetables thanks to this kitchen resource: a visual guide to selecting produce so it’s ready to eat when you want to eat it.
Most of us know the feeling of buying fruits or vegetables only to find out that they’re either already spoiled on the inside or so under-ripe that they need to be left out for days before eating. If only there were a way to know, in the shop, which fruit and veg is ready to go, and which pieces are going to be too stubborn or too mushy to eat. Luckily, there is!
Take fresh pineapple, for example. Prickly and wild-colored, it hardly invites prodding and poking to see if it’s ripe. Fortunately, you can use your eyes and nose: a green pineapple is under-ripe, an orange one is past it, so an evenly-coloured yellow pineapple is the best choice. Give it a sniff to check there’s no vinegary, fermented smell, because that would mean it’s already long past edible.
Broccoli is another of those items that sends false signals. You come home from work expecting to be greeted by a floret in the fridge, but it falls apart in the cooking pot. The trick is to make sure those stalks are still firm when you buy your broccoli. And make sure it’s bright green, as yellowing broccoli is already on the way out.
Let your fruit and veg know who’s boss by consulting the chart below before you go to the supermarket. Because a mango that holds itself together is a beautiful thing!
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Contributed by Barbara Davidson for Pound Place
About Barbara Davidson
Babs is a content writer at Enova International, Inc. with a Bachelors in Cinema Studies and English from the University of Illinois (ILL-INI!). She loves binge watching musicals, reading in the (sporadic) Chicago sunshine and discovering great new places to eat.
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