In an effort to expand my fruit and veggie repertoire, whenever I see new produce at the grocery store I get some to try. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t scour the entire produce department looking for new things when I’m at the store–just as they catch my eye, like yesterday when there was a display front and center of the entrance of these little babies:
At first glance, they look like white strawberries. Since I love strawberries, it wasn’t too hard to convince me to try them. Pretty sure my exact thought was “eh, what the hell?!?”
As tempting as it was to want to google them, I wanted to taste them before I did any research so as to not have any pre-conceived notions about what they should taste like.
I did text a photo to several friends to see if anyone had ever tried them and Becca responded with a “What? No. That’s wrong.” And I do have to admit my taste buds balked a little bit at the thought of eating a white strawberry, thinking it might taste as bitter as the white part of a red strawberry. But no, they were sweet. With a hint of creamy strawberries and melon.
According to the interwebs, they are a white strawberry with a pineapple-y flavor (aka pine+berry) and are a relative to the red strawberries we all know and love (or hate–because I find people are rarely noncommittal about strawberries). I definitely did not get pineapple. So perhaps they are like grapes and coffee and tomatoes where what you grow nearby can have an impact on their flavor? Or maybe they weren’t fully ripe. I did notice that the berries with the pinker/redder seeds were sweeter and more flavorful.
One final thought, if you’re in the “hate strawberries” camp just because you hate the seeds, you might want to give pineberries a try, as they’re seeds are much softer and didn’t get stuck in your teeth (at least in the few that I’ve eaten so far). Although if this isn’t your experience with pineberry seeds, please let us know in the comments below!
After about the third berry, my tastebuds stopped assuming they would be bitter strawberries and they will definitely be added to the shopping list a little more often!
The Epicurious Texan 