Persimmons
 

Does anyone else have a persimmon addiction this fall?

When it is ripe (soft, like a mango), it is like the most amazing, buttery sweet fruit, not to sweet - omigoodness.

They have tons of fiber and Vitamin C and even a good amount of protein (for fruit).

Normally, I'm not a huge fruit lover. But these guys have stolen my heart.

My son loves them. We have two trees in our back yard and a couple in our front.

My husband also makes persimmon bread, which is wonderfully moist and almost like a spice cake.

Yum.

I love most fruit, but I've never gotten hooked on persimmons. Persimmon lovers tell me I just haven't gotten a good one, so I've tried several times, and either I have the worst luck in persimmon selection, or I'm just not a fan.

(You don't even want to know what I think they taste like, seriously).

Never seen one - don't even know what they look like

I just have one memory of persimmons and that is when I was a little girl and I took a big bite of one and it was the most awful, bitter thing I ever tasted. I should try them again though since I'm older and maybe I'll find a good one. A friend of mine says they taste like brown sugar to her. hmmm...

persimmon: I would kill to have a persimmon tree!

Kaplods: now everytime I eat a persimmon I think about the disgusting things they could resemble to you! But really, don't tell my yet - wait until they go out of season! :)

Violet73: They are hard and a bit bitter if they aren't ripe. Normally, you have to keep them around the house for 5-7 days after buying them before they are ripe. When they are ripe they become much sweeter, more similar to a mango. The skin also will become very thin and hardly noticeable after it is ripe.

Actually, they are sort of like a mango - just more buttery and less fibrous. They need a lot of time before they are ready to eat (similar to a mango or avocado).

I haven't cooked with them yet because I enjoy them so much raw. I could imagine they would be perfect for many pastries and desserts.

I tried one once and it felt like peach fuzz in my mouth. I cannot recall the taste--it was enough to stop me in my tracks. Could it be I didn't get a ripe one? My hub and I joke because he calls parsnips persimmon all the time and actually had told me I was wrong until I showed him the Google result.

I am not a fan of the one that is horridly astringent before it is almost mushy and is traditionally eaten with a spoon (hachiya). I do enjoy, when gifted from neighbors, the fuyu one which is rock hard and kind of shaped like a flattened tomato. To me it has a spicy taste almost like a pumpkin pie spice blend. They are crispy and not overly sweet. Have you tried the harder fuyu ones?

I never tried them, but thank u, bc I want to now :) I hope they live up to the good comments!

tommy: good point - maybe we are all eating different things. I'm eating the Japanese Persimmon, Kaki Persimmon.

It looks like an orange, big tomato. When you buy it at the store they are typically rock hard. You have to let them sit around for a week or so before eating.

No I haven't had the harder ones. Both of the ones I had were soft, but not mushy - so I'm guessing they were underripe hachiya. The flavor wasn't terrible, just sort of bland and a bit like soap or bleach with some even stranger mental associations.

Although the "spice" taste would be a bad association for me too, because I absolutely LOATHE pumpkin pie, and most of the pumpkin pie spices (in fact it's the spices I hate not the pumpkin, because I'll eat pumkin as a veggie or have made cake mixes with pumpkin).

You must have had a traumatic childhood experience involving nutmeg!

I don't mean to but this comment strikes me so funny.
:D

LOL! Funny you should say that, because I do loathe nutmeg especially.

I'm really finicky about cinnamon too. My parents thought I was nuts, because I liked some things flavored with cinnamon, and hated others, and I would swear that I could tell the difference between the "good cinnamon" I liked and "yucky cinnamon" that I didn't.


It wasn't until well into adulthood, that I discovered (courtesy of Alton Brown, I believe) that I was right - that there are several different spice species that we call cinnamon (and there are multiple varieties withing the different species).


So it's likely that I like some cinnamon species, and hate others, but when you buy cinnamon, the label rarely identifies the species and variety of cinnamon. And most people don't detect much of a difference (at least not to the point of likeing one and hating the others).


I'm the same with vanilla. I like most "true" vanillas (but can definitely tell the difference between good vanilla and cheap vanilla), but I can't stand vanillin (imitation vanilla).

And I hate clove with a passion. My husband swears by dental grade clove oil for toothaches, and I've had some serious jaw and tooth pain recently due to a tooth I had to wait to get pulled. I was desperate enough to use the clove oil and I told my husband, "it works, but it tastes like A**."

He laughed so hard, and now can't stop quoting me on the topic of clove's nasty flavor.

Actually, I tried it for the first time EVER at my boyfriend's house a few days ago. His mom had told me that they're available in some parts of Russia and northern eastern Europe. She told me the name in Russian, so I didn't know what it was actually called until I saw this thread and googles "persimmons."

She said she had to freeze it before setting it on the table because it is ridiculously hard before it's "ripe." Wow. What a crazy fruit. It's very yummy though! When I ate it, it was like a half-freezed dried apple. It was sooooo good. Haha I'm gonna try and figure out where in NYC I can find these now :P