This wrinkled, rubbery apple tastes better than anything in supermarkets this month.
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| Click to view up close and personal. |
The texture is not bad either.
My photos shows one of the last of my GoldRush apples, harvested last fall and stored over the winter in mud-room and home-refrigerator conditions. (Technically not a mud room, but you get the idea.)
I could have preserved these a little better (for instance, see below photo), and they really peak in April. Nonetheless, even in their current condition Goldrush tastes great.
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| These June, 2017, Gold Rush are in good shape because I took better care of them. |
Time has concentrated and amplified their flavor, especially their sweetness. They are better today than in October.
In May they beat the pants off of anything for sale.
Keeper's keeper
A reader who grows GoldRush tells us, "The texture reminded me of a well-dried apple, not too dry and still chewy."
If there is a continuum from fresh and crisp to those chewy dried slices, mine are one step along that path.
There are limits to GoldRush's keeping ability, but this apple is still great more than six months after picking.
That rubbery trait is very cool. There are not a lot of apples that do it, but I've encountered a few others that do. I use Gold Rush a lot in breeding for the quality, keeping and disease resistance. It is also just a well behaved tree. I thinned mine yesterday and it has extremely heavy fruit set with most of the flowers ending up pollinated and setting fruitlets. I have not gotten any seedlings yet that seem to have its keeping ability and tendency to grow rubbery instead of soft or meally, but it is probably just a matter of time til one shows out. I've crossed it with some russets that have good keeping ability and similar texture, like Golden and Roxbury. Something good has to come of those seeds. Golden Russet x Gold Rush is especially promising for a very long keeping russet of very high and complex flavor. I have gotten good apples though and it seems to tend to throw good progeny. As a home orchard tree, it is hard to beat Gold Rush. As a sole tree, it is not great, because you don't get good apples until into winter basically. Not that they are inedible off the tree, but not very exciting. Even here as someone that grows and collects super late hanging apple I can eat off the tree in winter, I have use for it as something that can be stashed and dipped into once that is all over into February and beyond.
ReplyDelete@skillcult- can you breed for cedar apple rust resistance where you are? Not sure if red cedars grow in CA? That's GR's achilles heel back East.
Delete"Golden Russet x Gold Rush" sounds inspired! I hope it pans out.
DeleteOh, gosh, GoldRush. I forgot about GoldRush. Onto which tree am I going to graft a branch of GoldRush?
ReplyDeleteThat makes it sound like it would be a good drying apple. Golden Harvey tends to turn rubbery and concentrated after a few months in the fridge, but it is not exciting when dried. Best dryer I have come across was an unnamed rootstock that tasted terrible when fresh. Utterly sensational when dried, great tang, complexity and sugars.
ReplyDeleteFrom Sutton's Orchard in Stanthorpe, Australia- currently for sale, by the way.
Sounds like you should patent and develop that rootstock!
DeleteSounds a lot like my favorite drying tree, soft, almost inedible acidic fresh, but lovely when dried. Doesn't sound quite as special as yours, though.
ReplyDelete