Description
The ‘Fuyu’ Persimmon, also known as ‘Fuyugaki’ (winter persimmon), is the most widely grown persimmon cultivar in the world. Ours this year are coming from one of our OtterBee’s customers, who has a small orchard of various fruit up on Gardner Ridge. The homesteaders don’t spray, so even though their orchard is not “certified” organic, the fruit is nevertheless untouched by chemicals.
This round, flattened fruit has reddish-orange skin when ripe. The fruit is seedless and is excellent for fresh eating or cooking. These are normally harvested from mid-November through early December. If your persimmons are more yellow than orange, just leave them out on the counter where they can slowly ripen to a pretty orange color. If they get a bit soft as well, that’s okay – just cut them in half and scoop out the pulp! Check out this article from allrecipes.com for everything you want to know about persimmons – “How to Eat Persimmons”.
The Fuyu Persimmon is a “non-astringent” cultivar, which basically means it can be eaten even at the hard orange stage, since the tannin content is greatly reduced the moment it turn from green to orange. (Non-astringent cultivars have lost their astringency by maturity and can be eaten crisp like an apple or at various stages of softness.) Compare this to the “astrigent” cultivars – such as “Hachiya” or “Hiratanenashi” – which one must wait to eat until the fruit is completely ripe (i.e. mushy), due to the high content of tannin.
