Produce Guide
Vegetables
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Spring
Season: February-June, Peak: April
Buying: Look for tight florets on top and bright green color. Thick stalks, like an index finger, are best for eating alone, boiled, or roasted. Thin stalks, like a pencil, are best for chopping up and using in recipes like pasta and frittatas.
Storing: If cooking within a day or two of buying, just keep in the vegetable drawer. They will keep until rotting but has the best flavor if you cook it as soon as possible after purchase.
For prime storage conditions, treat asparagus like fresh flowers. Cut just enough off of the ends to expose cut-side, and store in glass or jar with an inch of water. Too much water will make it mushy. Tent with a plastic bag and store in the fridge. Keep just enough water to submerge cut-ends. This method can also revive wilted asparagus.
Tipbits: To prep asparagus, you need to remove the fibrous ends. An inch off the ends usually works. Very thin asparagus can be 1/2 inch. If you bend the end, it should snap off easily. If it doesn’t, remove more of the woody bottoms. Restaurants peel asparagus for the tenderest bite, but I don’t bother. It’s fine
Season: Late February-Late Spring (before it gets too hot)
Buying: Look for bright green, plump pods that snap when bent.
Storing: Store in refrigerator crisper drawer until rotten, which starts after a week.
Tipbits: Eat fresh snap peas raw. Use older peas in stir-frys or boiled. If snap peas have not already been de-strung, you need to snap off both ends and pull the fibrous thread out. On older peas, keeping the string is like eating dental floss. Try a pea to see if it’s young enough for you to get away without de-stringing.
Summer
Season: High Summer (July) – Early Fall (Octoberish)
Buying: Look for large, hefty peppers without soft spots or wrinkled skin. If I’m making a stew or roasting, I’ll sometimes buy the ones with wrinkled skins cause I feel bad for them.
Storing: Store in the refrigerator crisper drawer for a week or more. If it starts getting moldy, just cut off the moldy part and use the non-blemished part.
Tipbits: You can revive a wilted bell pepper by cutting it in half and submerging in cold water for an hour. Green bell peppers are indeed the unripest bell pepper. They are very vegetal and not so sweet, good where you want strong, grassy bell pepper flavor. They’re the best zero-heat substitute in a recipe calling for jalapeno/ other spicy peppers.
Season: High Summer (July) – Early Fall (Octoberish)
Buying: Look to the stem as an indicator of freshness. A green stem means a more recent harvest, whereas a shriveled brown one means the eggplant has been sitting around for a while. Skinny Asian eggplants are less bitter than large globe eggplants.
Storing: Store in the refrigerator crisper drawer for a week or more. If it starts getting moldy, just cut off the moldy part and use the non-blemished part.
Tipbits: If you’re struggling to cook tasty eggplant, it’s essential not to forget 1. enough salt 2. enough time. Eggplant is one of the few Summer vegetables that is gross to eat raw. You need to cook it until it’s completely soft, and you need to add enough salt to balance the natural bitterness. I don’t fry eggplant ever, so I never bother with salting and draining the bitter liquid out, which some sources recommend.
Season: Summer – Early Fall, Peak: Late Summer
Buying: Smell the tomato. It should have a tomato or earthy scent. If you’re buying supermarket tomatoes, they likely won’t have any smell. Roma tomatoes are best for guacamole and sandwiches. Grape, Cherry, Kumatos, and in-season heirloom tomatoes are best in salads. Canned whole peeled tomatoes are best for sauces. Mealy, beefsteak tomatoes bought in the dead of winter are best for nothing.
Storing: Store tomatoes on the counter, out of direct sunlight, with the stem side DOWN. When they start to get too soft, move them to the fridge. The fridge is not the ideal storage since it’s too chilly for them.
Season: June – October
Buying: Choose firm and medium-sized zucchini. Extra-large zucchini are bland and watery. Tiny zucchinis are not a good value, and you cannot stuff them
Storing: Store zucchini in the crisper drawer, it will last a while in here. If it starts to soften in the fridge, it’s still good for soups, zucchini bread, and roasting. Fresh zucchini is best eaten raw or grilled.
Fall
Season: year-round, with exceptions
Buying: a firm onion is a fresh onion. It should feel heavy for its size and be free of dark spots near the root end. Yellow and Spanish onions are the most versatile for all recipes. Purple onions are not, they have a strong, weird, sweet flavor that doesn’t go away during cooking. They’re best in small quantities in salads and sandwiches for color. Vidalia and other sweet onions are less pungent than yellow, good for kebabs, and raw in salads.
Storing: Store in a cool, dry, dark place. They should last several weeks. If they start to get moldy and pungent, cut off the blemished parts, and use in a recipe that requires cooking.
Tipbits: Crying while chopping onions is inevitable unless you’re wearing ski goggles or contact lenses.
Season: Fall (harvested) – Winter (storage)
Buying: Look for very firm sweet potatoes that feel heavy for their size. Avoid sweet potatoes with soft spots and sprouts coming out.
Storing: Store in a cool, dry, dark place. They should last several weeks. Sweet potatoes stored in root cellar conditions (50 degrees, dark), can last half a year.
Tipbits: Scrub sweet potatoes with a vegetable or kitchen dish brush to remove sand and dirt. The skin has a lot of fiber and other good stuff in it, so try to keep it around.
Season: Late Summer – Early Fall (stores well throughout winter)
Buying: Look for dark green skin, and a squash that feels heavy for its size.
Storing: Store in a dry, cool, and dark place, it will last for weeks. Once cut, cover with plastic wrap and keep in the fridge for a few days. It may start to grow mold if you forget about it, but you can just cut off the moldy part and cook the rest.
Tipbits: Everyone’s roasting kabocha squash, but I highly recommend braising, steaming, and incorporating it into soups and stews. Since it’s the driest winter squash, roasting can cause it to become chalky if overdone or if you start with a dud squash.
Winter
Season: Fall – Winter (best in late fall/ early winter after a frost)
Buying: Look for saturated green Brussels Sprouts with tight leaves. They should look and feel like dense little cabbages. Small/ medium sprouts are preferable over extra-large.
Storing: Store in your refrigerator crisper drawer in a bag with a paper towel to absorb condensation. They can last several weeks in there.
Tipbits: Remove yellowing leaves and cut a few millimeters off the bottom stem before cooking. This will cause a few leaves to fall off, but don’t throw them away. These leaves get crispy during roasting. Cut larger sprouts in half. Always sear/ roast brussels sprouts at scary high temperatures, charring is important.
Season: Summer – Winter (harvested summer through fall, stores through winter)
Buying: Look for firm spuds without green spots or sprouts. Thin, papery skin indicates a recent harvest as skins thicken during storage. If making baked potatoes, get uniform-sized spuds, so they cook evenly.
Different potato types vary in starch and moisture content. High starch, low moisture potatoes are best for mashing, frying, and whole baked potatoes. A good way to understand the difference is to think about the inside of a good french fry. It should be light, fluffy, and mealy, characteristics of a starchy potato. For low-starch potatoes, think of potato salad. Denser, waxier, holds together. Low starch potatoes are best for boiling, potato salads, and cubed roasting.
Mashed Potatoes: Russet, Idaho Yellow, Yukon Gold
Fried: Russet, Idaho, Yukon Gold
Whole Baked Potatoes: Russet, Yellow, Yukon Gold
Boiled Potatoes/ Salads: Red Bliss, fingerling, Yukon Gold, New potato
Roasting: Yukon Gold, Fingerling, Yellow
Note: Yukon Gold Potatoes are all-purpose
Storing: Store in a cool, dry, dark place. They should last several weeks. Potatoes stored in root cellar conditions (50 degrees, dark), can last half a year.
Tipbits: If your potatoes are sprouting and have green spots, cut away since these are mildly poisonous.
Fruit
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Spring
Season: Strictly Spring
Buying: Smell the strawberries, they should smell like strawberries. Look for very red berries with green leaves and little / no white around the stem.
Storing: Store in your refrigerator. Moisture will cause mold, so wash right before eating
Summer
Season: High Summer- Early Fall
Buying: It’s hard to go wrong if you’re buying in season. Bigger does not equal better
Storing: Store in your refrigerator. Moisture will cause mold, so wash right before eating
Season: High Summer- Early Fall
Buying: Smell the peaches; they should smell peachy. A firm peach will soften at room temperature, so it’s okay to buy a hard peach if you can wait a few days.
Storing: Store unripe, firm peaches in a single layer on the counter, stem side down. Once ripe, they should smell sweet and give in to pressure if you press with your thumb. Place in the fridge once soft to prevent over-ripening.
Season: High Summer
Buying: Pick a good watermelon by sight, sound, and feel.
Feel: A good watermelon should be very heavy for its size, indicating high water content.
Sight: The field spot should be yellow rather than white. Yellow indicates it sat and ripened in the field before being harvested. The stem should be shriveled, not fresh.
Sound: If you thump/tap the watermelon with an open hand, it should sound hollow and have a medium-pitch. Compare with others. Unripe watermelons have a higher pitch. Over-ripe are low-pitched do not sound hollow, they “thud” when tapped.
I look insane at the store picking watermelons, but joke’s on everyone else and their shitty melons.
Storing: Store on the counter, or in the refrigerator for cold watermelon (the best)
Tipbits: If you only eat half, cover the other half with saran wrap and store in the fridge for up to a week. If the fridge air has seeped in, cut off a thin slice that was against the saran wrap.
Fall
Season: Late Summer – Winter, Peak season: Fall
Buying: Pick firm apples that smell like apple. Granny Smith, Sweet Tango, Honey Crisp, and Macintosh are best eaten in the Fall. Pink Lady stores super well, it gets sweeter in cold storage, so it’s my favorite out-of-season apple.
Eating Raw (Crisp, Sweet, and Tart): Sweet Tango, Honey Crisp, Pink Lady
Baking (strong apple flavor, breaks down): Cortland, Macintosh, Granny Smith -never alone though, always combine granny smith with another apple otherwise it’s too tart alone IMO
Apples I dislike: Gala, Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Fuji (too sweet, no tartness)
Storing: Store in refrigerator or on counter
Winter
Season: Late Fall – Early Spring, Peak: Winter
Buying: Look for oranges that feel heavy for their size and smell fragrant. Ignore color. Ironically, saturated color is not an indicator of juiciness/sweetness for oranges.
Storing: Oranges are fine in the refrigerator or on the counter for a surprisingly long time. They’ll go bad on the counter after a few weeks, but taste better at room temperature. Spread them out, they get moldy faster when they’re touching.
Season: Late Fall – Early Spring, Peak: Winter
Buying: It’s hard to go wrong, just look for grapefruit that feel heavy for their size
Storing: Grapefruit is fine on the counter for a week or more, but like all citrus, they can keep in the refrigerator for months. Just take them out a few hours before eating, since they’re juicier at room temperature.
