I did the right thing by freezing my surplus pawpaws for later use and they tasted as good and flavorful as fresh. I did the same thing with the Honey Jar jujubes. One of them have been oxidized by exposed to the air too long before going to the freezer.
Tony
I did a bunch like that last year Tony since I’m not supposed to eat them dried. We froze about 100 pawpaw fruits which we used up until June. The flavor is not as good later. Yours look delicious!
My young Shenandoah tree had its first fruit this year and I was disappointed. It tasted bland and not nearly as good as my seedling of Mango that has some complexity to the taste. Hard to believe Neal thought this one was one of his best unless he was just looking for high pulp to seed ratio.
I wonder if this is another fruit whose taste got watered down by all the rain this year?
My Shenandoah pawpaw is 9 years old and very productive with huge fruits. They tasted richer as the later stage of ripening on the counter as the skin turned a little dark brown. I can only handled the rich flavor at the yellowish green stage.
OK thanks. Next year I’ll do more counter aging and hope it improves. They are big, that’s about all I can say for Shenandoah this year. Next year my Susquehana will bear and I have high hopes for that tasting better than Shenandoah.
I tried Shenandoah for the first time this year. I agree with you a bit that it is somewhat of a bland pawpaw. I tried a bunch of different named varieties at a festival and Shenandoah actually stood out the most. It really doesn’t have much of the typical flavors (banana/cantaloupe/bubblegum) that most pawpaws have, but it does have a unique vanilla type of flavor. It also has a nice creamy texture. In my opinion, they tasted more like vanilla pudding than pawpaw. I quite enjoyed them but not as much as Susquehanna. If you want a pawpaw with a strong and sweet flavor, that’s the one.
Tony,
At what stage did of ripening do you like to freeze your pawpaws? I have noticed mine are getting too ripe quicker than I can eat them. I also read a post of yours somewhere about refrigerating them. Do you let them get ripe and then place them in the fridge or will they ripen up after leaving the fridge?
Your posts are so helpful to us pawpaw newbies.
Thanks,
David
Regarding refrigeration- you can basically use the fridge as a sort of pause button. It will just slow them down regardless of the stage they’re in.
When you take them out they’ll pick up roughly where they left off and should be just about the same as if you hadn’t chilled them. However, fridges usually have a drying effect, so I’m sure there are subtle impacts.
I had some in the fridge for weeks and pulled them out to enter into a contest. One of the judges said it was third on his list. So it didn’t hurt that one!
So interesting that you mentioned oxidation. I accidentally discovered that cutting a pawpaw and leaving the slices (or just the flesh in whatever form) open to the air for 30 minutes or more produces some awesome effects to the flavor.
I specifically recall toasted marshmallow flavors in one accidental experiment.
Give it a try!!
Thanks Tracker! I’ve got a few too many on the counter and don’t want to lose them. I will give that a shot tonight.
Question for those of you who freeze the fruit whole as @tonyOmahaz5 did in the initial post - has anyone attempted to plant the seeds? I know for chill hours that it is suggested to keep the seeds above freezing, but this doesn’t happen in nature and there are bound to be a few that grow. I’d imagine the germination rate would be decreased but I don’t know by how much. This would be a fun project to collect data from.
A friend gave me a bunch of seed that he let dry out days or weeks?? so I soaked them for several days in water and have them stratifying so I’m going see if I can get any to germinate. Hopefully we will both be pleasantly surprised 
Certainly no harm in trying either frozen or dried seeds.
Especially the frozen ones I suspect will have some germination.
The dried ones I would expect extremely low if any germination.
I would also advise not to give up too early once seeds have been sown.
I had some very precious seeds I put in treepots and they didn’t come up while others did. I exhumed them and there was no radicle or anything, so I dumped them out in the yard.
Several weeks later I was shocked to find 3 baby pawpaw trees in that spot. Plants do amazing things.
Instead of sowing, I’m going to prove them in a zip bag in a warm spot after 100 day stratification
That would be a good idea, yep.
