Alright, this is John Kohler with OkRaw.com. today we have another exciting episode for
you and I always want to encourage you guys toe at seasonal fruits. So eat fruits that are in season now, wherever
you live. And you know, if you don’t live where these
fruits grow, you know, they're probably in your markets right about now and you could
find them, buy them, and enjoy them and eat as much as them as you guys can for the next
several months until they go out of season. Today I'm not going to be talking about these
guys, which is my Yacon flowering, which are known as earth apples—that’s an amazing
tuber that actually can be sweeter than some apples. We’re not going to talk about the figs because
the season is getting late, I’ve had a few just the other day. Here’s a few hanging on here. But they don’t have the heat to really make
them taste good. What I will be talking about is a delicious
fall fruit. It’s now available—it’s on the tree
behind me, you guys might see all these little globes, right? The tree is loaded up with these persimmons. That’s what we’re going to talk about
today, we’re going to find a ripe one to harvest. Alright this is a persimmon and this is known
as a giant persimmon. This is my hand, this is my hand holding a
persimmon. This thing is huge. Some as big as my head, not quite. But as you guys can see this persimmon looks
amazing. Now, this style of persimmon and if you see
other persimmons that are kind of flat like this—these are known as fuyu persimmon or
the non astringent persimmons. These ones can be picked and eaten right off
the tree. You know, when they're hard or you can actually
pick them and then kind of let them hang out and let them ripen up and eat them soft. So this gives you the most flexibility with
this particular fruit. Now, whether you're picking them off your
tree or whether you're buying them at the store, I do encourage you guys to pick the
darkest, deepest, richest orange ones you can find. Many farmers will start harvesting their persimmons
right when they get a tad of orange showing, and if you buy it like this, then you're going
to get ones that aren’t really that sweet, they're not really that good, they haven’t
developed the full nutrition or the full flavors or sugars in there. So for that reason when picking them out I
always encourage u guys to pick out the darkest, deepest ones. That’s number one. Number two is you want to wait until the first
frost and try to get persimmons later in the season. I find they tend to be better. What I find is they’ll actually get these
sugar cracks in the bottom of the skin. I don’t have any right now because we haven’t
had our first frost yet but I normally like to harvest these guys after our first frost
when they’ll actually get sweeter. Basically what happens when it gets the first
frost, then the plant basically puts more and pumps more sugars into the fruit so that
it will be basically frost protection and that’s what many other leafy greens do as
well, like kale for instance will get sweeter after the first frost and that’s why I really
love my winter greens because they’re actually sweeter and they taste better. So yeah these are the fuyu persimmons. Next I want to go ahead and sit down and share
with you guys another kind of persimmons you may see, how to eat them, and I'm going to
share with you guys my favorite part of the persimmon that I don’t think I’ve ever
revealed before on YouTube. So now I'm going to share with you guys another
kind of persimmon you may find near you or you may find at the farmer’s market. It’s right here. It’s this kind of persimmon. This is known as a hachiya persimmon, as you
guys can see this is like an acorn shaped, kind of looks like an acorn compared to a
flat persimmon that is known as the fuyu or the flat kind. Once again this can be eaten hard or soft
on the kind of looks like an acorn—these are known as astringent persimmons. These guys must be soft before you eat them
or you're going to be in a world full of hurt. Your mouth is going to be basically get all
the saliva sucked out of it and it’s not going to be a fun experience and then you're
going to hate persimmons for the rest of your life so don’t do it, right? This is actually good comparison to color. I want all my persimmons to be this color. They're much more riper, much more ready than
the color next to it which is the one that I just harvested, a bit prematurely. The color on the bottom is a little bit darker
but still not quite as dark as a hachiya here. So this guy needs to be totally soft, so as
you guys could see this guy is so soft it’s actually starting to crack there. And once it’s soft then you just eat it. So it needs to be softer than a ripe avocado,
and uniformly soft. This one I could press into it and my finger
kind of pushes into it, almost leaves a dent. If you push too hard I'm going to pop my finger
through, like this. Put a dent in it, look at that. But yeah, I'm going to eat this right now. But yeah, uniformly soft all the way around. Sometimes you know you might get antsy and
be like, alright John, it’s soft at the top man, I'm going to eat because I'm so hungry
and I want to eat it. And then you get to the bottom, it’s still
hard—the top is kind of sweet but not so good and the bottom is kind of astringent
and not so good so I don’t recommend doing this. Now if you have all hard hachiya persimmons
you want them to ripen faster, there’s a few techniques you could do depending on what
you want to do. number one is, put them in the freezer, you
know. Let them freeze. Overnight, take them out, let them thaw out,
and then you could eat them. The freezing will actually take away all the
astringency but then you’ll also be eating frozen persimmons instead of fresh ones. Another way you guys could do it is actually
if you dehydrate the persimmons, if you dehydrate the persimmons, even if they're unripe hachiyas,
that’ll get rid of the astringency also. One of my favorites is they actually peel
the persimmons and they hang these up and just hang them to air dry, like in the ceilings
or roofs of your house, rafters of your house—they do this in Japan, and those are dry persimmons,
those are some of my favorite. Those are like the best candy in the world. Another way you could ripen these up is actually
get a whole bunch of rice, if you still got rice laying around but basically bury these
in rice and that’ll actually help keep the etheline gas within itself and so they’ll
ripen a little bit faster. Luckily I was able to find these guys at the
local farmers market and they had like—we got ripe ones behind so always ask at the
farmers market if they have ripe ones hiding out somewhere because normally they won't
put them out for people because people will grab them and damage them and stuff. So I got to go behind in a farmer’s market
to the farmer and pick these beauties out. Now, most people would just take the persimmon,
just eat it and like that, you know, and that’s cool if you want to do that but my favorite
part of the persimmon is many people don’t know, is kind of like, we could peel back
some of the outer skin. So let me see if I can do this for you guys
on this video here. Alright, I got a little bit started. You see, I got the skin here and I'm peeling
this back and as I peel this back, I don’t know if you guys can see that but I'm peeling
this back right here. This is the skin. It’s like paper thin, right? This is kind of like tomato skins, right. If you ever eat some tomatoes and go to the
bathroom, you see tomato skins coming out, this is really not digestible by us although
it is digestible by our beneficial biome, microbiome bacteria. But I don't know if you guys can see the difference
in color between that but basically, there’s going to be apart that’s kind of shiny,
that’s where the skin is still left on and there’s a part that’s kind of like more
glistening, kind of like if you put on—if you're a girl and you put on lipstick and
it’s the glitter lipstick—kind of looks a little bit glittery to me. So we’re just going to go ahead and try
to get some of this skin only… again, and peel it back some more. alright, yeah, I think I did a good job. So the other thing is you could only really
peel back the skin when the persimmon is optimally ripe like this. Alright, here we go, we got it started, right? So see this, I just got it—look at how thin
that peeling is, coming off. So I actually like to go around, you know,
and not spend too much time on it because I can't be eating forever but I like to come
around and just basically try to grab the skin and just peel that back. I'm getting a nice piece off here hopefully. Alright, there’s a nice piece coming off,
just the skin. Wow, yeah, I got a nice—it’s like a second
skin on the persimmon, you guys have probably never seen this before. Anyways, we got that off. So the thing is once you peel this off, then
you're just going to go very gently to the part that you reveal what’s underneath the
outer skin. Oh here, I'm able to do it now really good,
here’s a big piece coming off. And once you do that, then you're just going
to basically—don’t bite into the middle persimmon, just eat the inner skin, not the
outer skin. Mmm. There’s a little bit of texture in there. It’s sweeter than the middle-middle of the
persimmon which is like really gooey and chewy and it’s so delicious. I love to eat it separately like this and
separating out the outside skin. Here we go, here’s a nice piece here pulling
it off for you. Because the thing is, when you do this, I
mean, it takes the flavor sensations of the persimmon up to the next level because if
you just were to put this in your mouth and bite it, and chew it really good, you’ll
get some of the flavors but this really enhances how good the persimmon is. So yeah, now I'm able to pull off some really
big pieces of that. And actually that second skin kind of almost
separates now from the inside goo mush. So this is like just the persimmon skin hanging. Man, that’s the best part of this persimmon
to me. Now of course, underneath that we got the
persimmon fruit which is super ooey-gooey. I mean, not saying that’s not good but man,
right near the skin, that’s definitely the best stuff and if you’ve never done this
before, you’ve got to try my technique. Post your comments down below, let me know
what you guys think. You guys enjoy the short format video telling
you guys more about my favorite part of the persimmon, how to pick some hachiyas and fuyu
persimmons. Hey, please be sure to give me a thumbs up,
let me know, also be sure to click that subscribe button down below to be noted for my new and
upcoming episodes, coming out every 5 to 7 days, and of course be sure to check out my
past episodes. My past episodes are a wealth of knowledge
on fruits and vegetables and eating a healthy diet focused around fruits and vegetables,
so the best foods on the entire planet. So once again my name is John Kohler with
OkRaw.com. we’ll see you next time and until then,
remember, keep eating your fresh fruits and vegetables, including persimmons—they're
always the best.
