Selecting Fruits For Food Preservation

Choosing apples for making apple butter isn't as spontaneous as going to market and taking the first few apples you get your hands on. No, choosing fruits for food preservation isn't like that. You must carefully select the fruit that you will dry, cook, or preserve. Here are some points you should remember.For almost any fruit, you should get those that are just ripe. Needless to say, fruits taste their best when ripe. But aside from the taste, another reason is the chemical composition of ripe fruits. Just-ripe fruits have the best kind of pectin, a natural substance that makes the fruit form a firm gel. Overripe or under ripe fruits will not make a good gel because their pectin still is or already isn't chemically sufficient.Fruits that are naturally high in pectin are plums, lemons, tart apples, and wild grapes. Those low in pectin, such as cherries, guava, strawberries, melons and blackberries, may need additional pectin to be processed properly. Such added pectin usually come from citrus fruits and apples.Ripeness can be checked through the fruit's color, so you should know the "ripeness criteria" of the fruit you want to preserve. Bartlett pears, for example, may be green when unripe and yellow when ripe, but not all pears have such color alteration.Many apple varieties, such as Washington's, are really red when fully ripe, while some like Fuji apples are pale red or yellowish. Fully ripened blueberries, on the other hand, should have no hint of red, white and green. When choosing fruits to preserve, it's of course important to consider not only the ripeness, but the physical state of the fruit. Check for bruises and soft spots that may have been caused by careless handling. These spoil the firmness of the pulp inside and, at times, may mean the insides are already rotting. Shriveled skin is also a no-no, especially when it comes to apples and grapes which should have firm smooth skins.It's commonsensical to make sure there are no worm holes. Gashes and holes on the fruit's skin might have already exposed the fruit to dirt and microbes--which are not really welcome when it comes to preserving fruits.This may be a very tiny detail, but it's better to get those fruits that still have the piece of branch or twig attached onto them. That way you're sure that there have been no other openings on the fruit, which means less bacterial growth and better food preservation.
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