I try to never buy full-price apples; usually one variety or another will be on sale at the supermarket. But some of them suck – I found that I often bought a crappy apple that I should have known was crappy from past experience. So I started keeping an apple diary – here are the notes I took on various varieties:
Ambrosia is mild, sweet, and moderately crisp
Jonagold is crisp with a very nice tangy flavor
Jazz is very very crisp with a decent (but not great) flavor
Opal is good – very crisp and sweet
Lady Alice is pretty good – crisp (but not “very crisp”) and sweet with nice flavor
Honeycrisp – my favorite! VERY juicy and sweet with a wonderful and unique crisp but juicy texture.
Red delicious – awful mealy texture, very little flavor. Terrible.
Granny Smith – decent crisp-ish texture, very tart, nice apple-y flavor.
Golden delicious – better than Red Delicious, but still not very good. Not very crisp, sweet, or flavorful.
Fuji – crisp and sweet but with very little flavor aside from sweetness.
Gala – decent all around, not a standout in any way. Acceptable but not much more than that.
Thoughts? Am I wrong on any of these, and what tasty (or not-so-tasty) varieties have I missed?
If you liked the Jonagold and their “tang” then try Jonathan apples. They’re often considered a “cooking” apple but try them raw and on their own. They have a sort of spicy note to them, of which the Jonagold is merely a pale rendition.
The downside is that it can be hard to find them loose - for years all I’ve been able to find are 3 lbs bags, which is fine for me because they’re my favorite and I’ll happily eat an entire bagful. They also tend to bruise more easily than many other varieties, which isn’t a problem if you’re making applesauce or pies, but more of an issue if, like me, you use them for snacking apples.
Red delicious gets an unfair reputation due to poor farming practices, overlong storage and because a lot of apples are called “red delicious” when they’re just a generic red apple.
Their success led to over planting, favoring output over quality, and throwing the surplus into storage for way too long.
Fresh apples from quality orchards in prime growing areas are great. Crisp with an interesting mix of sweet and sour.
You can do a lot to avoid, um, bad apples. Test the firmness. Pick ones that aren’t entirely red. Smaller is sometimes better. Etc.
If you like Honeycrisp but can’t find them (or the store only has those giant expensive ones), try Cripps Pink/Pink Lady apples. They’re a good substitute.
A couple of favorites of mine:
Prairie Spy - great texture, same sweetness as a honey crisp but a tangy tartness mixed in (think of a drop of lemon added in), absolutely my favorite! But they brown faster than anything- literally browning before the next bite and are ripe for only a handful of days so no storage possible.
Sweet 16 - a light beautifully crisp apple. Not overly sweet. Ideal lunchtime apple.
Cosmic Crisp - has been touted to be the apple to knock off the honey crisp. Very good apple- more rounded flavor than a honey crisp. I don’t know why they haven’t taken off yet.
I love Northern Spy. And Cox’s Orange Pippin is fantastic.
The first however is hard to find, and the second I’ve only ever had from a friend’s orchard.
– I did once in my life have a good Red Delicious; I agree that they exist. I never buy them, though, because anything available here under that name is vaguely sweet mush. I’ve been told that the problem is two things: one, that most of what’s sold under that name isn’t the original Red Delicious but sports selected because they were redder; and two, that it only really comes out right when grown in limited places, and apples under that name are now being grown about anywhere they’ll produce fruit, even if they won’t produce flavor there. If location’s a factor that wouldn’t surprise me – the same tomato can taste different grown on opposite sides of the same hill.
“at the supermarket” is the flaw here. Really good apples are only available at an apple orchard. Thoughts? OK- I like apples that bite back a little. Winesaps and King Davids (rare, hard to find) are what Granny Smiths weakly approximate. Grimes Goldens are also worth seeking out. Red Delicious are generally a joke. They stay pretty for months off of the tree but only taste good for a few days after being picked. The same goes for Golden Delicious- fresh from the orchard, they are excellent, but they just don’t keep well. Any apples in the stores now were either picked last fall or imported.
Here’s a link about Virginia apple orchards that may be near you. Where to Go Apple Picking near Washington DC: Farms & Orchards to Visit - Thrillist Go this fall and get some good apples. Some foodie articles I have read about apples say not to refrigerate them. This is false. Apples aren’t like peaches or bananas- they won’t ripen and get better off of the tree. Not refrigerating them only speeds loss of flavor and texture!
I’ve also heard good things about this variety but haven’t had a chance to try it. As to why it hasn’t taken off, that’s probably because it’s not widely available.
Egremont Russets are my favourites, they may not be popular in your location and indeed are only realistically seasonal even here in the garden of England.