I bought some Goldrush apples from two different local orchards. Both apple orchard Goldrush apples were not very good. Not a lot of taste just sort of sweet. I am not sure why so many people have a high opinion of this apple variety. I have had some Goldrush apples from the grocery stores ( from the Ohio area and also in stores without a state label listing) and they have pretty much the same taste. Not a very interesting apple. I was going to plant one in my orchard but I am glad I did not do so.
Tippy thanks. It is bad year for fruits grower here. No peach, no apricot. Few plums were picked my squirrels and Asian pears got stink bug bites all over. So not much to show off. Hope next year will be bettet
Have only a few apples or Asian pears as most of them went biennialing on me.
Have plums and peaches to save the season.
Hope you will have better luck next year. I have good hope because the national forecast just said that the northeast will have a milder winter this year 
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I would not call GR a sweet apple. To me, Fuji and Honey Crisp are sweet apples.
GR has pronounced tartness followed by sweetness, a good blend of both tastes and a firm texture. GR, that I kept in storage for 2-3 months, tasted sweeter because its lost some tartness but not all.
I am surprised you found GR that sweet considering they were grown in your zone 5.
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Itâs a type of hawthorn that grows in Mexico, so a distant relative of the apples. The fruit is a bit similar to a crab apple. Can be eaten raw or cooked. Just be careful chewing since the seeds are hard. The fruit contains a lot of pectin, so can be used in jams and jellies.
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I ate this Kousa Dogwood fruit for the first time out of curiosity.
The fruit are large, about the same size as good-sized lychees. The exterior looks similar, too. Thatâs where the similarity ends.
The inside was yellow. Texture was soft. It tasted mildly sweet and had several seeds (11 seeds in the cut up one in the pic). I have heard people make jam or jelly from them.
Anyone has any good recipes?
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I used a recipe like this once for Arbutus unedo,the Strawberry tree fruit,which has a mild Apple-like flavor and was good tasting and may also work for yours.bb
Ingredients for a medium jam jar:
- strawberry tree berries, 750 g
- orange, 1
- brown sugar, 100 g
- brandy, 5 tablespoons
Rinse the berries in cold water, and, while they are still dripping, put them in a thick-bottomed pan ( as always I used my cast iron Staub pan, ideal for jam ). Sprinkle the berries with the juice of an orange and cook on low heat for about ten minutes, stirring frequently with a wooden spoon until the fruit becomes soft.
Now sieve the softened fruit. Crush the berries with a wooden spoon and collect the pulp in a saucepan. There will be a great deal of waste: I eventually had 350 g of smooth, orange and velvety pulp, starting from 750 g of fruit. Return the pulp to the heat and stir in the brown sugar and 5 tablespoons of brandy. Bring back to the boil and keep on stirring with a wooden spoon for about 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and ladle into sterilized glass jars.
Sterilization. Pour jam into sterilized jars and close tight. Put the jars in a large pot and cover with water: bring to a boil. Let simmer for 20 minutes and then remove from the heat. Let the jars cool completely in the pan, then remove them from water. You can store them for several months in a dry, cool and dark place.
The strawberry tree jam has a special texture, it reminds me of the quince jam, but it also has some nuances of flavor that bring to the mind the fig jam. I find it unique, perfect for breakfast on a slice of toasted bread or in the afternoon as quick snack with some cookies, to give a special touch to a moment of relax.
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Interesting.
These dogwood fruit have soft flesh to begin with. It will be a task to separate seeds from pulp.
Just curious, what does brandy do to that recipe? Can it be other alcohol?
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The seeds are very small and hard in Strawberry tree fruit,but I may have used a food strainer to remove them first.
To be honest,there wasnât much Brandy taste and any alcohol can probably be omitted.I should make some more without it and see if there is a difference.bb
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You can probably do other alcohols but whiskey/bourbon/brandy mixes with cherries and certain fruits pretty interestingly. Vodka is in general great for infusions and a good filtered vodka will take on the flavour of whatever your infusing as long as you pair it with (or it contains) a slight amount of sugar.
Kousa berries are an interesting fruit. Yours looks pretty nice inside. I suck out the pulp from the center and toss the rest, since the pulp close to the skin is usually too gritty to be palatable.
They can vary a lot in taste from one tree to the next. Iâve had some that are orange inside and are really sweet with a nice peachy flavor. A different tree nearby had berries with a reddish colored interior and more of a berry flavor, but only mildly sweet and too seedy.
I think that Kousa berries could be a really good fruit if there was effort spent on developing superior varieties for the fruit (larger size, less seedy, less gritty, sweet) rather than ornamental value.
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These did not have gritty pulp near the skin. Flesh was all very soft. Only mildly sweet. Too many seeds to deal with. I gave all but a few to a friends.
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One the left was, I think, Hachiya, Asian, astringent persimmon, and on the right was Yates, American persimmon.
Hachiya was sweet with jello texture. The flesh near the stem end still tasted astringent. Not sure why the top turned black.
Yates was very sweet. (Hachiya sweetness pale in comparison). It was perfumy. A friend said with a hint of vanilla.Texture was gooey soft.
I like them both but will not eat them together again as I should enjoy each by itself.
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Actinidia chinensis âHongyangâ kiwifruit picked a couple of weeks ago. Stored in frig and then room temp for 2 days. Nice red color, but not quite fully ripe yet. Iâll try another one in a few days.
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A friend has freeze-dry machine. He gave me a big jar of his freeze-dried mixed fruit. They tasted a llttle odd. Dried, spongy but crunchy. Some I donât mind eating them again. Others, I donât care for.
Would you like to guess what fruit were these?
.
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SweetTango at Costco. In my families opinion it lives up to itâs hype. The best apple that I have tasted in a long time.
And since I have my phone connected⌠a few of mine this year. (not sweetango)
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Banana, watermelon?, persimmon, jujube? 
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SweeTango is very good for grocery store apples. How do yours compare to the Costco batch?
I tried another Suncrisp yesterday. It seems to lose its brix and texture quicker than some other apples. The softer texture isnât the end of the world but the loss of the sugar leaves the apple tasting a little funny IMO. The slightly russeted Golden Delicious I get from a local orchard store is a better apple to grow in quantity. Iâd only devote a branch to Suncrisp.
Canât wait to try the GoldRush, Hoopleâs, and Kiddâs that I planted in my back yard this yearâŚ
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@ammoun,
Of those, I liked banana the least and American persimmon the most.
My friend did not take out the seed of that jujube. The seed was hard like rock 
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