Using pawpaws

Any good ideas for what to do with my pawpaws? I am enjoying eating several per day but nobody else in my family seems to want to eat them. I was thinking of making some ice cream tomorrow. I had some pawpaw ice cream before but it didn’t have enough fruit in it, there was little pawpaw flavor. I would use a large amount of pawpaw, like about 50-50 cream/milk to pawpaw.

Today I made grape jam for the first time in a long time. I used Swenson Red grapes, I had many pounds of them this year. I like dark-skinned grapes the best for jam but it will be something different.

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The only Pawpaw ice cream I’ve tried was at One Green World about 2-3 years ago and yeah,it was fairly mild.
One thing I always read people using the fruit for is bread and sometimes beer.Just about anything that a Banana is used for,a Pawpaw should work.I’ll try to find some recipes. Brady
Here’s a start from Kentucky State U.—http://www.pawpaw.kysu.edu/pawpaw/recipes.htm

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5 recipes down at the bottom of this page.

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I bought and planted Swenson’s Red on your recommendation. How does the jam taste. I thought they were table grapes?

Scott,
Have you considered drying them? To many pawpaws sounds like a good problem to have!

Drying a Pawpaw?Is that possible? Brady

Thanks for the ideas. I was thinking of drying some apples today and maybe will throw in a few pawpaws. My guess of why they are not dried is all the seeds and softness will make getting slices difficult.

All of the pawpaw ice cream recipes I looked up have too little pawpaw in them, I am going to make up my own recipe. Pawpaw is very creamy so I should be able to put in a large quantity without hurting the consistency.

@mrsg47, Swenson Red is an excellent eating grape. But nobody in my family wants to eat seeded grapes besides me, and I am getting many pounds of them. I have decided that the new U Ark. grapes are the best table grapes for my family, they are right up there with Swenson Red in flavor and with no seeds. Swenson Red does cook up well; the jam tastes surprisingly similar to quince jelly I have made in the past, a cross of fruit and honey.

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Scott,
Dry them like bananas the same way as persimmons (remove seeds first). It’s like fruit leather with persimmons not exactly the same with pawpaws. If you want to know the other recipes people are talking about here is a great source Cooking with Pawpaws

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Oh Yum!

Well the pawpaw ice cream is definitely a winner! I found the following page on banana “ice cream” with only bananas, no other ingredients:

http://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-creamy-ice-cream-with-just-one-ingredient-cooking-lessons-from-the-kitchn-93414

so I figured pawpaws are similar enough. I still added some milk, but it gave me an excuse to not add so much milk or sugar. The rough recipe I used was 2 cups pawpaw puree (blended to make it all smooth), 1 cup 1/2 and 1/2, and maybe 1/2 cup sugar. Plus vanilla and cinnamon to taste (not so much of the latter, the idea is to taste something but not notice it is cinnamon). There is no need to make the egg custard of a standard ice cream recipe since the pawpaw itself is a custard. In fact this ice cream looks and tastes something like those rich eggy vanilla ice creams, with pawpaw flavor thrown in.

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Scott,

Don’t eat too many pawpaws. The overall effect is like eating bananas with metamucil (the fiber will make you more than regular).

A reliable source tells me that Galloping Goose Vineyards of Hampstead, Maryland will soon be making a special batch of pawpaw wine. Availability will be limited.

Matt, I’ve been down that pawpaw road many times… :slight_smile: It occasionally affects me, but I have been eating a lot lately with no noticeable extra-regularity. But it is one reason why I want to find more ways to put up pawpaws, to spread out the consumption.

I am going to dry pawpaws as my next pawpaw project. I think it will be easier to make pawpaw leather, slices with all those seeds is a difficult task, but making a puree is easy.

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Scott really liked your idea of the ‘one fruit’ icecream. Boy ‘pawpaw’ ice cream sounds soooo good. A great dessert for this very hot summer. I would like to try one before I buy a tree. No pawpaws in my area of RI. :cry:

Tim Hensley is back with another video. This time, he and his daughter give you their recipe for making pawpaw pudding.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fJI09FJ0i5E

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Would pawpaws work in like a protein shake? A regular breakfast for our family is to makes shakes with yogurt mixed with berries or peaches from the orchard. My pawpaws are not producing yet but I was thinking this may be a way to enjoy them.

That sounds awesome. They are similar to bananas in terms of smoothies/shakes kind of thing.

I ate my first Maria’s Joy [edited to fix name] pawpaws last night. They deserve all the praise on flavor, they are a notch above the others. The brix was 23 which is also several points above your average pawpaw.

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I made some pawpaw cookies, with some pulp I’d frozen back a year or so earlier… took them to work to share with co-workers. Precipitated a mass outbreak of vomiting/diarrhea…couple of folks were out for 3 days. 10 years out, I still get kidded about pawpaw cookies… and no one, I repeat, NO ONE would eat a pawpaw product if I brought it to work.

I can eat one fruit… and that’s enough to last me for a year. Or two or three.

I was on the pawpaw bandwagon 15 years ago, really pushing them. Now, not so much. But, I see a new renewed wave of interest, and many folks pushing them - some of whom have never tasted one… they’ve just read rave reviews on them. I just wonder how many of them and their acolytes will be disappointed when they finally get to taste them…

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My buddy brought me some once. Ah try these… best fruit ever…I didn’t give him any more of my crappy fruit for a month…if you get where I’m going.

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Scott,is that the one also called Maria’s Joy (166-13)?I have read very good reviews about the flavor. Brady

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Oops right, Maria’s Joy. I always get the name wrong. Its one of Jerry Lehmann’s varieties.

@Lucky_P, I was on the pawpaw bandwagon, jumped off after a few years of fruiting, but am half back on now. The big disappointment is my family really has no interest and the digestion issues on top of that, but I have been really enjoying having a couple a day for the last week or so.

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