How the Pickiest Pick Produce

Of course, today’s supermarkets have already narrowed your fresh fruit and vegetable choices for you—and you don’t have to worry about such nuisances as weevils or borers in the produce on most grocery shelves. Just about anything you buy will be uniform and good quality. but there are ways to choose the tastiest of what’s available, whether from your garden, a farmers’ market, or the grocer’s shelves. Here are words of wisdom from Amelia Simmons, author of American Cookery (1798), that still hold true in this day of hybrid technology and flashfrozen products.

Use the ruler for carrots.
When you want big chunks of carrot for stew or need grated carrot for cakes or muffins, you can’t rely on those convenient prepeeled baby carrots; you need bigger roots. If you rarely buy full-size carrots, remember that they’re not all created equal. Be sure to choose carrots that are “middling siz’d, that is, a foot long and two inches thick at the top end.” Their flavor and sweetness is “better than overgrown ones,” but they’re large enough to work with easily.

See red for slaw.
If you’ve got a food processor and want to try your hand at home-shredding cabbage for slaw, try red Savoy cabbage. The reddest of the small, tight heads are best for slaw, claims Amelia Simmons. But don’t try to cook any leftover cabbage, she warns. “It will not boil well, comes out black or blue, and tinges other things with which it is boiled.”

Pick the pudgy parsley.
Whether you’re making a selection from your own herb garden or the produce section, look for “the thickest and branchiest” parsley for the fullest flavor. “The best-tasting parsley is always growing vigorously and getting enough water, so it won’t be straggly or yellow,” says Rose Marie Nichols McGee, co-owner of Nichols Garden Nursery, in Albany, Oregon. “And if you’re picking parsley from your garden or a window box, you should pick from the center, but not just because it’s thickest there.”Picking parsley from the center on a regular basis prevents the plant from bolting (producing a seedstalk). Plants that bolt may have an off flavor, Rose Marie explains.

My watermelon is like a red, red rose. In American Cookery (1798), Amelia Simmons advises readers to choose redcored watermelons, since they are “highest flavored.”And this is easy to do these days, since grocery stores and farmers’ markets often sell cut halves and slices of watermelon—you don’t have to wait to get home and cut your melon open to see what you’ve got. As for selecting the best uncut melon, Leslie Coleman, director of communications for the National Watermelon Promotion Board, suggests that there is a more reliable method than the proverbial thump. “Select a firm, symmetrical watermelon that is free of bruises, cuts, and dents. Turn the melon over. If the underside is yellow and the rind has an overall healthy sheen, the watermelon is probably ripe. Select melons that are heavy for their size.”