Personally, I like big, juicy figs dripping with honey out of their belly button. That was what I was raised on. I guess if I was raised on nasty figs, I’d want those. A gal I used to know was raised on flat doughy pancakes that did not rise much. That was what she liked as an adult. If the pancakes rose, she would bang them down flat. Childhood has a big effect on us.
It’s not the variety, it’s the weather they are grown in. To get good looking fruit the weather needs to be warm and dry, mainly dry. Rainy and humid weather makes for nasty looking figs. Eastern USA grown figs nearly always look worse than those grown in dry climates.
I’ve been growing figs here fore 13 years. These look pretty good to me.
I’m curious which ones you find nasty? And can you post a picture of a good-looking, good-tasting fig? Finally, where did you grow up so that you were raised on figs?
They don’t look nasty, but look too ripe or not enough water. I ate the neighborhood figs, my own figs, and they looked great for most part. They tasted sweet and juicy. The only time it looked like that, is when one of the neighbor didn’t water enough in the summer.
The fig collectors sometime collect it because it’s rare, not necessary that it tasted good. Maybe some have some history on them. Maybe it look bad, but taste good.
Weather even affected figs grown in my greenhouse. The fruit was better eating quality and blemish free when it was hot and sunny outside. A long stretch of cloudy rainy weather ruined figs even when they didn’t get wet. Top two are sunny weather harvest. Bottom is after a week or two of cloudy weather.
In my experience, it’s hard to get a fig “too ripe” unless damp weather conditions promote mold. In dry air, a ripe fig will just dry on the tree. Or there’s a problem with fruit flies.
And ideally, figs are not supposed to be juicy. Water just dilutes sweetness and flavor. The best figs are dry-ish. In general, the longer you can leave a fig on the tree before you eat it (or a pest does – bird, hornet, squirrel . . . ), the better.
Figs develop their best flavor when they dry on the tree. Even a little wrinkling can dramatically improve fig flavor. Fig connoisseurs drool over photos of wrinkly figs.
I got exactly one fig last year and it was the way you described it “dry-ish”. This was not intentional… it was hiding in plane sight and I missed it. By the time I found it, it was dry-ish and delicious.
Yeah, I’m not saying that figs can’t get juicy. They will if they get too much water. But figs are native to a Mediterranean climate where they get rain only in the winter / early spring. As the fruit grows and ripens, water is restricted to what the tree can extract from the ground. So the fig in its natural environment is not “incredibly” juicy.
And while figs are generally sweet, the impact of water on taste is to dilute flavors. A dry-ish fig tastes sweeter and richer.
