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A pawpaw goes from green to a slightly paler, yellower green as it ripens, and some develop brown or black blotches on the skin that look like damage but are not. None of that is a reliable signal, and growers who wait for a dramatic color change end up picking a week late and finding fermented fruit. Two fruit in the same cluster on the same branch can also ripen five days apart.
Judge by feel and smell instead. Cup the fruit in your palm and press gently with the whole hand, never with a fingertip. A ripe pawpaw gives slightly all over, the way a ripe avocado or a soft mango does. At the same time, put your nose to it: a ripe fruit smells sweet, tropical and unmistakable from a foot (30 cm) away, and an unripe one smells of nothing at all.
Ripening runs over two to four weeks in late summer to early autumn, so the tree is picked over repeatedly rather than stripped in one go. Check every day or two once the first fruit softens.
| Signal | Not ready | Ready | Gone over |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feel | Hard, no give at all | Yields to gentle whole-hand pressure | Soft, collapses, skin wrinkles |
| Smell | None | Strongly sweet and fruity at arm's length | Sharp, alcoholic, fermented |
| Skin | Firm mid-green | Paler green or yellow-green, blotches normal | Dark and slack, splits |
| Stem | Firm on the branch | Separates with a light lift and twist | Fruit already on the ground |
| Flesh | White, hard, astringent | Cream to deep orange, custard-soft | Brown, sour, watery |
How to pick without bruising
Pawpaw skin is thin and the flesh is soft, so a fruit dropped even a short distance is bruised, and a bruise turns brown and then rots within a day or two. Every step of the harvest is about not letting the fruit take an impact.
- Lift and twist, do not pull Support the fruit from underneath in your palm, lift it slightly and give a gentle twist. A ripe pawpaw releases with very little force. If it resists, leave it: it is not ready, and pulling tears the skin at the stem.
- Catch, never let it drop Fruit high in the tree can be shaken loose, but only onto something soft. Hold a sheet or a tarp under the branch and shake gently. A ripe pawpaw landing on grass from 10 feet (3 m) is a bruised pawpaw.
- Single layer, no stacking Carry the fruit in a shallow tray in one layer, not in a bucket or a bag. The weight of fruit above bruises the fruit below within the time it takes to walk back to the house.
- Collect windfalls the same day Fruit that has fallen on its own is fully ripe and is usable if you get to it immediately. Check under the tree every morning through the season. By the second day the fallen fruit is fermenting and the insects have found it.
- Sort as you go Separate the bruised or split fruit from the sound fruit before you put anything away. One rotting fruit ruins a whole tray in a day.
Why you have never seen one in a shop
A ripe pawpaw lasts about two or three days at room temperature and around a week refrigerated at 40F (4C), and it bruises if it is handled roughly at any point in that window. No commercial supply chain can pick, grade, pack, ship and shelve a fruit on that timetable, which is why a native North American fruit with excellent flavor is essentially unknown in supermarkets. Growing it yourself is the only realistic way to eat it.
You can buy yourself a little time. Fruit picked at the firm-but-yielding stage, just before it is fully soft, refrigerates for up to about two weeks and finishes ripening on the counter over a day or two afterwards. Fully soft fruit put in the fridge holds for a few days at best and loses aroma. Do not refrigerate hard, unripe fruit at all: it chills and then never develops proper flavor.
Using and keeping the crop
A tree in full production drops more ripe fruit in a fortnight than a household can eat fresh, so plan the processing before the harvest starts. The flesh is eaten raw with a spoon, straight from the halved fruit, and this is what it is best at. Cooking dulls and sometimes turns the flavor bitter, so avoid recipes that bake the pulp hard.
The reliable way to keep a glut is to freeze the pulp. Scoop the flesh out with a spoon, pick out the large brown seeds, press it through a colander to remove the skin fragments, and freeze it in measured portions in bags or tubs, pressed flat. Adding a little lemon juice slows the browning. Frozen pulp holds good flavor for about a year and is what you use through the winter for ice cream, smoothies and quick breads.
Note the date each tree gives its first ripe fruit, its last, and roughly how many fruit it produced. Pawpaw ripening moves substantially year to year, and a two-year record tells you when to start looking and whether your hand pollination is actually paying off.
Do not eat the seeds or the skin. The large brown seeds are not edible, and the skin is unpleasant and best left behind on the spoon.