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Post by howard lee on Oct 5, 2022 9:45:15 GMT -5
Now that autumn is officially upon us, the kid is going apple picking upstate today (she is not religious) with friends. I asked her to be on the lookout for two of my favorite types:
The Crispin, or Mutsu
and the Honeycrisp
I have no intention to bake a pie. These are good simple eating apples.
What are your favorites?
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Post by Village Idiot on Oct 5, 2022 9:59:35 GMT -5
For eating, the Honycrisp. For baking, the Granny Smith.
Least favorite: The Washington apple.
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Dub
Administrator
I'm gettin' so the past is the only thing I can remember.
Posts: 20,031
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Post by Dub on Oct 5, 2022 10:10:28 GMT -5
Granny Smith apples are my favorite eating apples. I want an apple to be very crisp and not sweet. The sweeter the Apple the less I like it.
There are some apples that are variegated red in color, crisp, and not too sweet. Maybe they are called Fiji but I can’t remember. Whatever they are called, they’re pretty nice.
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Post by drlj on Oct 5, 2022 10:41:01 GMT -5
We get Michigan Honey Crisps pretty often.
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Post by coachdoc on Oct 5, 2022 11:31:11 GMT -5
Only found them once but they are sooo tasty! Juici!
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Post by howard lee on Oct 5, 2022 11:57:44 GMT -5
Granny Smith apples are my favorite eating apples. I want an apple to be very crisp and not sweet. The sweeter the Apple the less I like it. There are some apples that are variegated red in color, crisp, and not too sweet. Maybe they are called Fiji but I can’t remember. Whatever they are called, they’re pretty nice.
I like 'em sweet and sassy.
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Post by billhammond on Oct 5, 2022 12:07:30 GMT -5
SweeTango, Zestar, Honeycrisp -- all developed at the University of Minnesota. Tasty suckers.
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Post by Marty on Oct 5, 2022 12:17:01 GMT -5
SweeTango, Zestar, Honeycrisp -- all developed at the University of Minnesota. Tasty suckers. What he said. DaWife makes a wonderful Chicken Tarragon salad using both sweet and tart apples, way good. The tarragon dressing is made with plain yogurt usually the day before.
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Post by Shannon on Oct 5, 2022 12:17:16 GMT -5
I just finished munching a tasty Gala, but my favorite is still good old-fashioned red delicious.
Honeycrisp is great, too.
Actually, I like essentially any apple.
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Post by Rob Hanesworth on Oct 5, 2022 12:25:56 GMT -5
I just finished munching a tasty Gala, but my favorite is still good old-fashioned red delicious. Honeycrisp is great, too. Actually, I like essentially any apple. The 'red delicious' apples we get around here are only red. They seem to have been bred for longevity in storage and shipping. Inside of the red is a flavorless white substance that's either too hard or too mushy. I like Gala, Fiji, Honey Crisp, and good old yellow delicious.
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Post by gbacklin on Oct 5, 2022 12:48:28 GMT -5
Granny Smith, Honey Crisp and Pink Lady
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Post by Village Idiot on Oct 5, 2022 13:10:28 GMT -5
Would we have been able to name so many varieti3 25 years ago? And, on the other hand, did all of these varieties exist 25 years ago?
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Post by james on Oct 5, 2022 13:11:01 GMT -5
There are a lot of varieties. Here are 74 beginning with the letter B. One of them is Braeburn. I'm not any sort of apple aficionado but I like those.
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Post by billhammond on Oct 5, 2022 13:53:36 GMT -5
From KSTP-TV
There’s a good chance your favorite apple was developed by a team of researchers at the University of Minnesota.
The University has been developing new varieties of apple trees since 1908. There are about 30,000 trees growing at the 200-acre Horticultural Research Center in Carver County. They’ve grown millions of trees over the years searching for the next Honeycrisp.
Apple breeder David Bedford says it all started when early settlers moving west brought apple trees with them.
“You know it was sort of a subsistence life,” said Bedford. “But apples gave them a little bit of sweetness. There was some sugar in apples, you could bake them, and you could make sauce of them. And a lot of them went into hard cider, let me tell you!”
The University of Minnesota has introduced 28 varieties of apples in the past 115 years. The list includes the Haralson, Zestar, SweetTango, First Kiss and the biggest hit of all, Honeycrisp.
“Honeycrisp really has spread around the world. It’s been a great ambassador for our breeding program,” said Bedford.
The research center plants about 4,000 apple trees a year. According to Bedford, each one is propagated from a tree with promising qualities. “And we will take cuttings from that tree, graft that onto a rootstock and in effect, clone this tree.”
The goal is to create a better tasting, more hardy and disease-resistant apple.
They get rid of another 4,000 trees each year that don’t make the cut. And to determine that, this time of year, when the fruit hangs heavy on branches, Bedford uses his keen sense of taste to sample up to 500 apples a day.
“Well, you know, they say an apple a day keeps the doctor away. So you can imagine how far away that doctor must be from me,” he said.
“When you think about the apples that the university has developed, you have to start with David Bedford. And he’s this treasure of a resource to the industry,” said Paul Hugunin from the Minnesota Department of Agriculture.
According to Hugunin, Minnesota sells up to $20 million worth of apples a year.
“Minnesota-grown apples are nothing short of miraculous,” he said. “We’re living where it’s very difficult to grow things because we’ve got a short growing season. We have some of the harshest winters anywhere. And yet we have apples that are grown all over the world and are some of the best anywhere.”
There is a lot of swinging and missing in apple breeding. One in 10,000 trees will make the cut. Here’s how Bedford searches for perfection:
“So the first thing we would look at, of course, is the skin color red? And most people assume that if an apple is red it’s ripe. But I can tell you that that’s only true in about 50% of the cases. The red skin color will often come before the real maturity does. But the real truth is told on the backside, the part that’s not red. When you turn that apple around you want to see a more yellow.”
If it passes the eye test, he tastes them. “For me,” Bedford said, “the first thing I’m thinking about is what is that texture? Is it like a Honeycrisp or is it like a Red Delicious? Is it wonderful or is it horrible?”
Bedford says he rarely tastes an apple and thinks it’s wonderful. “But I do remember that one case in my recent history. And that was the first time I tasted the original SweetTango tree.”
SweetTango is a cross between a Honeycrisp and a Zestar. The original SweetTango tree is still alive and stands alone in a field at the Horticultural Research Center because it’s the only tree that made the cut. It’s the parent of every SweetTango apple tree in the world.
“As I say, 1 in 10,000 makes the grade and this was a 1 in 10,000,” said Bedford. “But a Honeycrisp or its children; when you bite into it and pull your mouth back, it cracks off in a slab; a slab of just explosive juiciness.”
The most famous tree is in another part of the orchard. It’s the oldest Honeycrisp apple tree in the world.
“It’s been pretty productive,” said Bedford. “I would say somewhere in the neighborhood of probably 20 million trees worldwide. It’s been a workhorse.”
More than anything, Bedford says you need patience if you’re in the business of developing new kinds of apples. “I think in the apple breeding world you have to be satisfied with delayed gratification because the whole process will take 20-30 years. And in fact, Honeycrisp was bred 30 years before it was released. And now it’s been out for about another 30 years. So 60 years later we’re still proud of it.”
Bedford and Professor Jim Luby have worked closely together to lead the U of M’s apple breeding program for 40 years. They say apple variety number 29 is called Triumph. It will be available at garden centers next year. Variety number 30 is in the works, but it doesn’t have a name yet.
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Post by epaul on Oct 5, 2022 14:04:44 GMT -5
Would we have been able to name so many varieti3 25 years ago? And, on the other hand, did all of these varieties exist 25 years ago? Honeycrisp was developed by the University of Minnesota in 1960. After a 34 trial period, it was released to the public in 1994. Honeycrisp is the result of a cross between the Keepsake apple (a U of M release) and a "mystery" apple, [MN447 x Northern Spy) x unknown], an apple used by the U of M's breeding program for it's positive attributes. mnhardy.umn.edu/honeycrispThe U of M's apple breeding program will make a couple thousand crosses each year. Most are soon tossed, those with promise are evaluated over a lengthy trial period for taste, hardiness, diseases resistance, production values. If a variety offers something, has a trait that would make it a valuable addition to already available varieties, it is released. Honeygold is not a parent to Honeycrisp despite widespread accreditation that it is. U.S. Plant Patent 7197 and Report 225-1992 (AD-MR-5877-B) from the Horticultural Research Center indicated that the Honeycrisp was a hybrid of the apple cultivars 'Macoun' and 'Honeygold'.[1] However, genetic fingerprinting conducted by a group of researchers in 2004, which included those who were attributed on the US plant patent, determined that neither of these cultivars is a parent of the Honeycrisp. It found that one parent was a hybrid of the Keepsake (itself a hybrid of Frostbite (MN447) x Northern Spy)[10] while the other was identified in 2017 as the unreleased University of Minnesota selection MN1627. The grandparents of Honeycrisp on the MN1627 side are the Duchess of Oldenburg and the Golden Delicious.[11] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeycrisp
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Post by howard lee on Oct 5, 2022 14:13:00 GMT -5
“As I say, 1 in 10,000 makes the grade and this was a 1 in 10,000,” said Bedford. “But a Honeycrisp or its children; when you bite into it and pull your mouth back, it cracks off in a slab; a slab of just explosive juiciness.” (Italicization mine)
Good grief, I love this. Spot on and why I love them so.
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Post by billhammond on Oct 5, 2022 14:16:48 GMT -5
It's interesting to me that PAC NW Honeycrisps are different enough from our local ones that I never buy them, even though they arrive here well before ours are picked. Freshness counts, of course. And First Kiss was developed so we can have an early variety similar in taste and texture to the U's other winners.
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Post by Hobson on Oct 5, 2022 15:10:14 GMT -5
I can not eat the mealy and flavorless Red Delicious that appear in our grocery stores. I like my apples tart and crisp. A new favorite is Cosmic Crisp. cosmiccrisp.com/Lately I've noticed that many varieties of apples are bigger than what I would eat with my breakfast. Sometimes I'll core and nuke and cut up and save half for the next day. There goes the crispness.
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Post by jdd2 on Oct 5, 2022 16:55:05 GMT -5
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Post by millring on Oct 5, 2022 18:14:52 GMT -5
I grew up with an orchard in the yard. 9 trees. I ate green apples. I like granny smiths because they remind me of my youth and green apples. Granny Smiths taste a lot like not-quite-ripe golden delicious -- my favorites from the family orchard. Additionally, granny smiths make wonderful pies for those of us who like tart as much as sweet in a pie. Woodchuck's makes a granny smith hard cider that's maybe my favorite hard cider.
But if you asked me what's my desert island apple -- the only apple I'd be left with on earth -- I'd pick Honeycrisp, and it isn't even close. One of the wonderful things about honeycrisp is that they are almost never bad. Some apples are short-seasonally wonderful, but the next time you buy them, they're mush. I can't stand mushy apples. I will throw them away after a bite if they're mushy and not crisp. If they don't break away with a crack at the first bite, I probably won't like them.
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