Good question, because it leads into this week's column: the top 10 fruits. This is an important subject, intended to help you make your selection as the produce section fills up with options.
In addition to taste, the rankings take three other issues into consideration:
- How easy is it to get the fruit? Fruits available year-round have an advantage.
- How portable is the fruit? Those that you can take with you have an edge.
- How hard is it to eat? If it requires napkins, it ranks below something you can eat with ease.
Away we go:
10. Oranges. The Charlie Sheen of fruit: When they're good, they're very, very good. When they're bad they're a mess. Also, the amount of work they require is usually not commensurate with the payoff.
9. Pears. The underachieving cousin of the apple, pears are 80% water and create a mess. On the plus side, they're generally in season and for a bag lunch, they're behind only apples and bananas.
8. Blueberries. A "superfood," although I'm not sure what that means. Blueberries lack a strong flavor, but they're a great addition to other foods. If salt and pepper were fruits, they'd be blueberries.
7. Peaches. Peaches are like high NBA draft picks–unpredictable, but potentially incredible. A perfectly ripe peach is amazing, but maybe 10% of peaches are perfectly ripe.
6. Cherries. The Michael Vick of fruit: Elite at their best, but with a short shelf life and significant problems. The biggest issues are stems and pits. If the scientists who created seedless grapes could work on cherries, they could create a near-perfect fruit.
5. Strawberries. Arguably the best fruit to pick and eat, they have a unique sweet flavor. Unfortunately, the strawberry season is short and it's also not easy to take strawberries along for a picnic or work lunch. No. 1 berry.
4. Pluots. The hybrid of plums and apricots is like mobile phones – a recent addition that changed everything. I'll take them over either of their parents (plums, apricots) because pluots got the best of both sides of the family.
3. Apples. The blue-collar fruit, apples just show up every day, ready to provide. There are multiple variations, all pretty good. If you ask people to rank their favorite fruits, no one would list apples first, but virtually everyone would have them in the top three. By the way, apples got a bad deal with the Garden of Eden knock. The Bible says Eve picked a fruit, not an apple.
2. Grapes. They're No. 1 when in season and seedless grapes are a modern miracle. (The three greatest achievements of science in the past 150 years are the discovery of penicillin, the advent of space travel and the creation of seedless grape.) Grapes are ranked second only because they are not in season year-round, a handicap that is almost offset by the fact that grapes become raisins, another interesting fruit.
1. Bananas. The GOAT of fruit. Available 365 days a year at your grocery store and they always taste good. They're portable and easy to peel – and even the peel (which is discarded) is great because of the slipping-on-a-banana-peel gag. Everyone likes bananas, the Michael Jordan of fruit.
Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.
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