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July 23, 2004:
Picking
And Keeping Summer Produce
Interview
with Russ Parsons author of the book, How
To Read A French Fry
Mike
Carruthers:
It's important to know how to pick good produce.
Russ
Parsons:
But, the thing, I think that's as important as picking
good fruit is knowing how to take care of it when you get home.
Russ Parsons,
food editor for the Los Angeles Times and author of the book,
How To Read A French Fry.
Because
there are some fruits and vegetables that should go immediately
into the refrigerator things like lettuce, grapes. There are
other fruits and vegetables that shouldn't be refrigerated.
For example a tomato you should never refrigerate chilling it
ruins the flavor. Peaches and nectarines, if you stick a hard
peach or nectarine into the refrigerator it'll never get any
better, and in fact it'll get worse. If you leave a hard peach
or nectarine at room temperature for a day it'll actually continue
to ripen, then you can stick it in the refrigerator if you want
to.
Want to
know how to pick a good melon?
Smell
it. Smell the stem end of it; there should be that really wonderful
flowery kind of melon smell. Cantaloupes when they're really
ripe, the netting on a cantaloupe is very pronounced also the
background color should be golden. With honeydew melons, when
a honeydew melon is ripe it simply drops the stem all by itself.
So, if the stem end if clean that's usually a good indication
that the melon was picked dead ripe.
And one
last tip.
If you've
got two pieces of fruit of the same kind of fruit and you can't
choose which one to pick, pick the one that's the heaviest,
after they're picked they continue to give off moisture.
At somethingyoushouldknow.net,
I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.
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