Joanne Roach (00:14)
Hello and welcome back to the Food for Kids podcast. I'm Joanne from the Foodies and this is the November slot of a regular monthly episode where I give some money-saving tips to make the most of the fresh seasonal fruit and veg we've been buying. This should help you store it better and use up any leftovers.
As you might know from previous months, I build my content around seasonal produce and my main product that I sell is a set of 12 children's books set in a veggie patch. Each book focuses on different fruit and veg that's in season that month and because they were chosen to make sure that children explore lots of different plant families during the year, I'm using the same produce from the books in these episodes to talk through storage and money tips so that we also cover most families of fruit and veg during the year. This month, the book of the month, is Pear and the Lost Leaf and in December we have a story about an apple who sneaks out of the storage shed. So today I'm going to talk about apples and pears. Whether you're just trying to make use of some windfalls you've been given, you're taking advantage of apples being cheap in the shops, or you have some pears which have suddenly gone from rock hard to nearly mush and you need to use them up, this episode is to make the most of them.
So first up is how to store them and although we tend to lump these two fruit in together there are some key differences between them. Apples only come off the tree easily when they're ripe. If they're picked before the seeds inside have matured they won't ripen off the tree. So generally when you get an apple that's been harvested it is ripe enough to eat and you're just maintaining it until you have chance to eat it.
If you have large quantities or you have trees around with them on you can set up a cool dark place to store them. Make sure none of them have bumps and bruises because they will rot quickly from the bump. If you have a lot and you want to store them in trays you'll find that supermarkets will often let you take their used cardboard produce trays away if you ask them and then you can wrap each apple in a little bit of newspaper - or be honest in this house, because we read online newspapers, we're still using up our kids old A4, A level and university notes. The wrapping up just stops any rotten bits touching the ones next to them, because as the old saying goes, a rotten apple really does spoil the barrel.
If you listened to episode 46 with the list of seasonal foods, you'll have heard that commercial apple stores keep them cool and also ventilated to reduce the ethylene gas that comes off them from ripening each other up, so bear in mind that they will ripen each other once they start going, so keep an eye on them every few days. Don't store windfalls like this as they've usually got a hidden bump somewhere even if you can't see it. It's best to use them up or freeze bits of them as discussed in our interview with Kate in a minute.
If you only have a handful of apples to store, pop them in a freezer bag or re-use an old bread bag and put them in the bottom of the fridge. The bag is there to stop them giving off gas to other things in the fridge and to stop smells getting into them. Or a cool cupboard somewhere is also good. Obviously they will last on the counter or in a bowl for a week or two.
So that's apples, but pears on the other hand ripen from the inside out which is quite unusual. So if you wait until the outside of a pear is soft it will already be going a bit brown and mealy, possibly even mushy in the middle. So you can have pears that are under ripe in your house and they'll continue to ripen up until you're ready to eat them. So if you have a lot to keep, put some aside in a cool dark place to prolong that unripe stage and then get a selection out on the counter at room temperature in a brighter place so that they can ripen up. You can tell when they're starting to be ready when you can slightly press the little bit of flesh next to the stalk.
If you want to speed them up ripening you can also put them near avocados or bananas because they also give off ethylene gas or put them in a paper bag and then they'll trap their own gas in with them or you can double down and put them in a bag with a banana. Once they're ripe do use them up quickly though because they do go off in the middle quite quickly.
But now let's move on to longer term storage and you can also absolutely freeze both raw and cooked apples and pears. I had the regular monthly chat with the lovely Kate Hall from The Full Freezer about how to freeze apples and pears and here's that interview now.
Joanne (04:19)
Okay, so we've got Kate Hall here, the freezer geek. She's come to talk to us about what to do with our seasonal produce as usual. So November, our character is pears, Kate. could you tell us what would we do if we've got leftover apples or pears, if we've got friends in the neighbourhood who've had windfalls, or we've just got some leftover at any time of year, what do we do with our apples and pears?
Kate (04:40)
Sure. So I mean, the obvious thing to do is go down a stewing route or cooking them ever so slightly so that you can have them there handy in the freezer, frozen in portions ready for crumbles or for pies. And it is obviously the perfect time of year for that. But I do want to throw a bit of a wild card in there because if you are like me and you're sometimes inherently lazy and you don't want to have to go through that whole process of doing that cooking right away, then you do have the option to just freeze the chunks as they are. So I'd always recommend peeling just because the skin does toughen in the freezer. So I'd always peel apples, pears first. But then you can literally just cut the flesh off in chunks. If you want to, you can have a little dish of lemon juice there and just, you know, brush it as you go to try and prevent that browning happening. But if you work quickly, then as soon as you get it in the freezer, it won't brown. You'll be able to retain the quality.
And this, to be fair, this is something that I do more if, for example, one of my children has said, mommy, can I have an apple? And then they've taken one bite and just put it on the side and decided they don't want it anymore. What I would do is cut out where they'd taken a bite, peel the apple, and then I cut it into matchsticks. And I'll freeze those. So I spread those out on a lined tray so that they're all frozen individually. And then I'll pop them into a freezer bag so that they're stored away from the cold air. And then we put them in things like porridge. So I mean, you can snack on them still frozen, but obviously they are quite sort of soft and quite brittle. So it's not quite the same as other fruits that we tend to snack on frozen things like frozen mango or frozen berries berries. We're less keen on the texture of things like apple or pear whilst it's frozen. But things like putting it into porridge or throwing it into smoothies or making sorbet with it is just a nice alternative. If you're not wanting to go through that cooking process, then it just gives you a nice little sort of stop. And it means as well, you could do that.
And then if you decide you want to stew them, then you can do it in the future. It doesn't stop you from doing that.
Joanne (07:07)
Because they've gone in raw so they can go in again when they've been cooked.
Kate (07:11)
That's it. So if, if for example, you were getting small crops kind of dropping and you've not got a lot all at once, you could just freeze the chunks and you could collect them and then wait until you've got a whole batch and then do a massive batch cook if that's what you're wanting to do. And then freeze that batched cooked apple or cooked pear and just separate it into portions so it's usable portions. So yeah, if you've got a food that is raw and you freeze it, you can then cook it and then you can refreeze it and then it can be reheated once that is perfectly safe to do. That's absolutely fine. So yeah, it's a nice handy little pause button if you've just not got the time or not got the inclination to do it all in one go.
Joanne (07:57)
That's great. Cause quite often when you keep thinking you're going to get around to cooking stuff. It will go off while you're waiting to batch cook. So you can get it in the freezer raw. Then you've bought yourself some time basically haven't till you've got the time and the inclination to do it properly.
Kate (08:11)
Totally, and I think as well it makes it a lot easier to get other people to help you because if you're just asking them, you know, sit with me for five minutes and just help me peel these apples, they know they're not going to get roped into the cooking process as well or that they're going to feel guilty because they're going to help you with one bit and then they're going to clear off. So I find it's a really effective way as well of getting the family involved and getting them to just do one simple task so that when I need to do the next thing down the road, it's a lot easier for me and I'm not having to do quite so much from scratch all by myself. So yeah, it does make a little bit of a difference.
Joanne (08:49)
That's brilliant. Thanks, Kate.
Kate (08:51)
Fantastic. Thanks so much, Joe. Take care.
Joanne Roach (08:58)
So that's freezing. For the listeners who are into dehydrating foods, you can absolutely dehydrate both apples and pears, but because of how they ripen I treat them slightly differently. Apples make great apple rings as snacks or little chunks. Dehydrate them until they're dry enough to store but leave some chew in them to make a nicer snack, rather than when they're too dry and brittle. If you do dry them until they're totally dry and brittle, one way you can use them is to blend them in small batches into powder to add to cereals, pancakes or into smoothies. Leave them as chunks though and only blend a little at a time because the sugars in them means that powder can clump if you do a big batch.
Pears on the other hand dehydrate beautifully once they're a bit riper and they end up as slightly sticky gooey caramelly sort of tasting pieces which make a lovely snack especially with mature cheese or dark chocolate.
One other way to store apples and pears that we didn't touch on in the conversation with Kate is to make applesauce or puree. When I have a lot of apples or pears I tend to bung them all in a huge pan or in slow cooker and cook them down to a chunky puree and keep some of chunky and then puree some of it. You can then can it if you're into that or I just tend to freeze it in portions. The applesauce that you make like this is less dense than the applesauce that we buy in the UK in a jar, the stuff we put on pork,so if you use it to bake American recipes that have apple sauce in the ingredients then adjust the liquid a bit or reduce the apple sauce down a little bit first. But it is used in lots of recipes for making things both sweeter and more moist so google some recipes for fresh apple sauce, things like cakes and muffins and pancakes use it brilliantly. And you can freeze it in bags or I freeze mine in jars, old salsa jars are roughly one cup measure, so is an old hummus pot and a medium mayo or jam jar is about two cups worth.
Pear puree on the other hand is brilliant in quite a lot of South East Asian recipes. An under ripe English pear is not quite a perfect substitute for an Asian pear but it works at a push. I freeze pear puree in portions by putting it in silicon muffin cases and then when it's frozen hard I pop the pieces into a bag. Then I use it every time I make kimchi or any Korean recipe that calls for pears, like a beef bulgogi.
Okay, so now we've stored our apples and pears but now we want to use some up, either from fresh or frozen, from cooked or raw. What can you use them in? The obvious answer is crumbles and pies. Apple pies are such a brilliant thing but if I'm honest I always admire people who can make a properly enclosed top and bottom pastry pie without getting a soggy bottom that'd terrify Mary Berry. I've never really managed it, so I tend to just make them with a pastry top only because I find that easier.
Crumble is of course a brilliant traditional way to use up fruit of all kinds and there are so many ways to make the crumble topping. I have a recipe on my website which has full instructions for children to make it so I'll link to that in the show notes if you fancy doing it with them. You can also do the same recipe with pears but just make sure that they're softened up before baking, I usually par cook them. And adding ginger powder to the sauce is lovely with pears.
Another great classic twist on the open pie is the tart tatin where you cook down some apple or pear pieces in a pan with a little sugar or honey until they're soft and then you tuck them into bed with a piece of puff pastry on top I just use the supermarket ready rolled stuff and then you bake them like that and then turn it upside down when it comes out, it's really gooey and delicious and caramelised. I'll link to a classic recipe in the show notes.
If you've got a lot of apples you can obviously add them to jams and chutneys, they add bulk to more expensive ingredients and they also often help them set because of the pectin in apples. A really gorgeous preserve for grown ups or for kids with adventurous palates is a chilli apple jelly. I'll put a link to that in the show notes. It's lovely.
If you've got a bunch of windfall apples where you've chopped random bits off and it's not quite enough to do anything specific with, you can put them under a pork roast as a bed for it to sit on and the juices run out of the pork into the apple and it makes its own amazing sauce or this idea pairs really nicely with gammon too.
Grated apples and pears are brilliant in a bunch of things. Raw in coleslaw, cooked into red cabbage as a side dish, add them raw to pancake batter or bake it into muffins.
And because of their sweetness, apples and pears are great in small cubes in salads with punchy or bitter flavours like a kale salad or with roasted butternut squash or roasted Brussels sprouts and seeds and a punchy or tart dressing.
And of course you can use apples in baking cakes. Central European countries like Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Poland are all brilliant at traditional apple cake and I'll link to a recipe in the show notes that takes me back to coffee and cake in Germany every time I eat it. Or for a different sweet dessert you could also make a sauce using chunks of apples and a little sweetness and spice added and just spoon that over plain sponge cakes or use it as a filling for crepes.
So that's some recipes to get you going, I'll put loads of links in the show notes as well as links to Kate's videos on freezing apples and pears. I'll see you on the next episode to wrap up November and in the meantime, happy eating!
0 comments