FreshPoint

Garlic: Perfectly Pungent

Garlic is a go-to ingredient in just about every cuisine and there is most likely a love/hate relationship in every country to go along with it. Love it for the delicious flavor it brings to so many dishes and irresistible aromas it releases while cooking; hate it for the strong trace it can leave on...

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Produce 101: Citrus

Citrus is anything but basic when used in the kitchen. It can be used all over the menu… use it in pastry with the zest and the juice, use it in the bar, use it in gift baskets, even use the segments in a salad. Adding a pop of citrus juice brightens any dish.

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Produce 101: Pears

We know you know what pears are, but do you really *know* pears?

What’s the best pear for poaching? What pear doesn’t usually oxidise and is great raw for salads? What pear is great for snacking? Different varieties have different kitchen roles, and selecting the best one for the job can make a difference.

Ethylene can become a friend or foe when it comes to the storage and handling of your produce. Where do pears fall in relation to ethylene?

Let’s dig in.

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Produce 101: Winter Squash

Summer Squash vs. Winter Squash You may wonder what a winter squash is versus a summer squash…well, the short answer is it’s a squash that’s allowed to fully mature. The seeds fully mature and become hard, the skin becomes a lot thicker, and the flesh is really dense–and these squashes typically (but not always) need...

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Root Vegetables and Tubers

Root Vegetables and Tubers: A Brief History Before the widespread domestication of plants, our earliest ancestors foraged for wild root crops, like carrot and beets. Later cultivated, these underground riches included nutrient-dense root vegetables and tubers with limitless culinary uses.  Now a common food staple, these nourishing veggies became fundamental ingredients of regional cuisine across...

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What’s the difference between a shallot and an onion? 

What’s the difference between a shallot and an onion? Just ask my first restaurant chef when I graduated from The Culinary Institute of America.  He’d be happy to scream the difference at you, just as he did me that fine day so early in my chef career when I used shallots instead of red onions...

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Is it really pumpkin you’re buying in those cans?

Very few items are as evocative of a season as are pumpkins. Jack-O-Lanterns, pumpkin pies and warm spices all come to mind. Yet, the history and importance of the pumpkin is often overlooked. Native Americans prized pumpkins and squash as a sacred crop, as they also did with beans and corn, in fact, these three...

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Do cranberries really grow in water?

Often thought of only as an ingredient on holiday menus, cranberries have a long and colorful history and was an incredibly important food source for the early Native American Tribes. However, the cranberry was not only used for food, they were also used as a textile dye, hunting bait, herbal medicine, and the leaves were...

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A face for radio: Heirloom Apples

Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, Fuji, and Gala along with a few others seem to dominate the apple selection in most markets, but did you know there are over 7,000 apple varieties being grown worldwide? In fact, 90% of the apples sold in the United States are from only 11 varieties. These varieties, for...

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