A Primer on Persimmons

November-January is persimmon season.

There are two varieties of persimmons which are commonly available: (1) the conical Hachiya and (2) the round, flat Fuyu.

Any persimmon you buy should be be a bright deep orange color. The brighter and deeper the color, the better. It should be as free of black spots as possible.

Fuyu:
Fuyus can be eaten when they are crisp. But I think they are best when they are slightly soft, so I like to leave them out on the counter for a few days to let them soften up.

Hachiya:
The thing about Hachiyas is that they are completely inedible if they are not ripe. A ripe hachiya is *squishably* soft. It should look somewhat like an overripe tomato. Looking at a ripe hachiya, you would think that by the standards of any other fruit it was overripe. The skin should be wrinkled and a bit loose (not taut over the fruit) and the fruit itself should feel like a mass of jelly. The fruit should at a stage where you're afraid of handling it for fear that the skin will break.

This is information I could not find online. I would always buy firm taught hachiyas, wait a couple of weeks, at which it would have softened somewhat and deepened in color. It would "look" ripe to me. I think I must have discarded at least a dozen hachiyas before finally buying what looked to me like badly overripened hachiyas, which are of course perfectly ripe hachiyas.

I would recommend buying already ripe hachiyas as opposed to buying unripe ones and letting them ripen on the counter. Hachiyas seem to take a very very long time to ripen. (At least, more than 2 weeks, which is the longest I've waited).

Hachiyas are considered superior to Fuyus in flavor and I heartily agree. While Fuyus are very good, Hachiyas are absolutely divine.