There are all of the varieties here that we too find in the supermarkets. From Gala to Jonagold. The more interesting apples are in the outdoor markets on the market days.
There you will find our regional apples (at the local market). The largest outdoor market is every Saturday. I will take pictures for you tomorrow.
Of all the American apples we grow here Granny Smith is the favorite. Galas from New Zealand come in second. All-of the local apples are blemished or bruised. The big market has the magnificent displays. I will show you those tomorrow.
Isnât Chatai, âSiri?
Certain British Pippins are grown here for the British population. Red Delicious is also popular.
No Mackintoshes in sight. You can buy a tree but they are scarce.
If you are a chef buying for a restaurant you need guaranteed product and volume. The cheap restaurants will buy the apples on the list you mentioned. The restaurants that care about taste have all varieties delivered; mostly from private orchards fromnall parts of the country.
An ancient Bialletti 12 cup moka pot; 2 big tbsp. coffee in the basket and water filled to the pressure release valve makes 22oz. of exceptional coffee from the old thing. It comes out hot and strong enough to stand up to full cream milk- I like enough in it to make the whole blend taste almost âchocolateyâ.
ive tried pies made with all of the common apples as well as the standard in alot of recipes, the granny smith and i still prefer the yellow transparent . if made with them in the hard green stage, they hold their shape well. i like a tarter pie anyway. my mother liked to sprinkle some rasins in her pies. ive never seen anyone do that except her. it was very good like that also. i have about 30 qt. bags of y.t pie filling frozen. i like to reheat and eat with a couple scoops of vanilla ice cream as well as using in pies and tarts.
Iâd like to put in a vote for Antonovka as a very fine baking apple. Katharine and Vixen are also excellent - I just finished a superb cobbler made with both.
Ram Fishman claimed that Pink Parfait was the best pie apple from his collection, and while I donât doubt it, Iâve never baked with it, myself. Iâve always jealously hoarded it for fresh eating instead.
King David is really a special apple to me also and Crimson Crisp is maybe the best DRs I grow in my nursery besides Goldrush. Itâs really a great apple for home growers for a variety of reasons.
Jonagold is just one of many apples I enjoy and on a good year Iâd say my favorite off the tree is Spitz, which is considered a tart apple- where Jonagold excels for me is as a cooking apple because it reduces the need for sugar and has very nice aromatics, but I also like tart apples for cooking. I like Jonagold with Goldrush in pastries.
But most of all, I like a variety, and this year I have quite a range to choose from, even if they didnât reach the brix level they do in years with less rain.
My King Davids have a lot of water core, which I donât mind at all, but they probably wonât stay good for long. .
I just picked my Goldrush apples and my wife turned a bunch of the âscratch and dentsâ into an amazing pie for Thanksgiving. They are firm and quite tart still, with some much more ripe than others. Worked out beautifully.
Looks delicious. Congrats on making your first lattice pie. It takes a little time to get the exact baking time down. Different ovens can take different baking times ( different actual oven temps vs what you set for the oven control for- an oven thermometer can help).
I used to be a baker at a dessert/ cake shop. It took a while to get used to each different oven and the baking times we had there.
You are spot on about the McDonaldâs fried apple pies from years back ( they were a LOT better than the McDonaldâs baked pies they serve now- when they were first brought out of the vat the filling was as hot as molten lava-lol)
I was a manager at McDonaldâs for some years. They used Northern Spy apples for their apple pies back then.
This is very difficult to believe because I donât know how they could have sourced them in the last century. Iâm 71 years old and have never seen this apple available via the kind of commercial production that McDâs relies on for sources If they used them it must have been through direct contract with commercial growers, but why would they choose N.Spy? Granted, itâs an outstanding sauce apple, among other things, but its not a very grower friendly variety.
Researching it after writing that paragraph suggests your particular McDonaldâs may have had a unique recipe, some outlets serve foods that arenât specific to the chain and when McDonaldâs changed their recipe from fried to baked, there were holdouts for some time. Americans do love our fried food. Hereâs a paragraph about the apples they use and used to use.
As noted, before McDonaldâs recent upgrade, the apple pie filling used to be a delicious â if not somewhat suspicious looking â gooey mix of diced apples. These apples could be from anywhere: Italy, New Zealand, an enchanted poison apple forest, etc.
Now, however, McDonalds has pledged to use only fresh, home-grown apples. Specifically, the franchise will offer pies made from six types of apples: Golden Delicious, Jonagold, Rome, Gala, Idared, and Fuji.
I think for pie, tarts and preserves; I much prefer apples that hold together under cooking. I was kind of shocked at the number of English Apple varieties slanted to sauce. Those folks love them some Apple sauce. Old sour melt away cultivars galore.
Thatâs ok. If I can score some Peasgood Nonsuch and Norfolk Beefing scion wood; all is forgiven.
Thanks, so now Iâm left to wonder where Mrs. Gâs info comes from since she is contradicting Scott and other sources.
I live in NY but Iâm not aware of what the chefs in NYC use for apples, and unless you work professionally with a lot of chefs and asked them this specifically it would be pretty hard to find out. I know someone who distributes a lot of organic French wine to restaurants in NYC, so maybe I should ask her.
I have been trying to find out what French chefs use by searching the internet, but ingredients of chefs recipes down to varieties of fruits is not a carefully researched subject as far as I can tell.
I donât know where Scott obtained his info on what varieties French chefs use either. Heâs the one that originally made me think that a lot of them use Yellow Delicious, or did at the time he was talking about. .
