What makes pears gritty?
As I wrote
yesterday, I was
raised on found fruit so I hardly notice things like spots and bruises
and gritty pears. Mark, on the other hand, was raised on Red
Delicious --- he doesn't seem to mind insipid fruit as long as it looks
and feels pretty. I chopped up one of my stolen pears for lunch
yesterday and he turned up his nose at the texture, which sent me to
the internet, wondering about pear grit.
It turns out that the
grit in pears is caused by stone cells (also known as sclereids)
--- the same material that makes walnut shells and cherry pits
hard. All pears produce stone cells, but there are a few ways to
get around them. The pears you buy in the grocery store have been
bred to produce far fewer schlereids, but even old fashioned pears are
more edible if raised properly. To reduce grit, pick your pears before they are ripe, when stone
cells are at a minimum.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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