How to choose the right tangerines?
This issue becomes especially relevant with the approach of the main winter holiday – the New Year. The tradition of serving tangerines for the festive table was formed in Soviet times, when the only winter exotic were they – Abkhaz tangerines. Today the situation is completely different: there are many manufacturers, there are even more varieties, and sellers often do not tell the whole truth about their product. This article will help you navigate and choose the most delicious, ripe and healthy fruits.
Primarily. pay attention to the quality of the fruit:
- There should be no rot and mold. It is not just tasteless, but hazardous to health.
- The skin has an even color, from yellow-orange to reddish, without spots or damage.
- Dryness or excessive softness of tangerines indicates a violation of storage and transportation conditions.
- It is the “classic” tangerines from Abkhazia that are considered the most environmentally friendly: they do not need to be transported from afar and, therefore, there is no need to treat the fruit with chemicals for preservation.
Ripeness is very important, and here you should not be guided by the color, because it speaks, rather, of the sugar content. Abkhazian tangerines always look much paler than their Moroccan red-orange counterparts. Mandarin is ripe if:
- It is easy to clean.
- With slight squeezing, juice is released from the skin.
Individual taste preferences are the decisive factor in the selection. Someone prefers tangerines with sourness, while others prefer extremely sweet ones. The most characteristic feature is the intensity of coloring of the fruit skin: the brighter, the sweeter… You can also try weighing a tangerine in your hand: sweet and sour varieties usually seem lighter.
For many buyers, the absence of seeds in tangerines is of fundamental importance, but this sign can only be determined by knowing the country of origin. So read the information on the package, ask the seller and choose:
- В Abkhazian There are few seeds of tangerines, they have a sweet and sour taste. Fruits are medium-sized, yellow-orange in color.
- Turkishare usually pretty “bony”. The rest are similar to the previous ones, but larger.
- For Spanish tangerines are characterized by a variety: there can be many or few seeds, and sometimes varieties are found completely without them. The taste is usually sweet, the skin color is bright orange.
- Moroccan tangerines are good not only for the small amount of seeds, but also for their great sweet taste. In color, they also stand out from the rest – rich orange, almost red.
- Israeli they also do not differ in the abundance of seeds, their taste is sweet, the skin color is orange. They ripen, by the way, later than everyone else, so they appear on the shelves only in the middle of winter.