Paw Paw photo by Guy Hand
I’d only just stumbled onto the odd little things. They sat in their basket like malformed mangos or stunted bananas, all frog-green and unfamiliar. I’d heard the name paw paw but couldn’t remember where; nor did I know this native American fruit had a taste as close to the tropics as your likely to find in northern climes. (Paw paw is the only member of the Annonaceae family that grows beyond the tropics. Other family members include the custard-apple, cherimoya, sweetsop, ylang-ylang and soursop.)
According to a recent article on The Atlantic magazine’s food site, I share my paw paw ignorance with others:
“The poor paw paw is hard to grow and, despite its long history, very few people in the U.S. have eaten it. Like a lot of the old fruits, the amount of work required to grow ‘em versus the yield in picked, ripe paw paws isn’t all that great. It doesn’t ship well, and shelf life is short so you can’t keep it in the cooler indefinitely.â€
Paw paws certainly aren’t the first food to fade from sight simply because their mass market appeal isn’t obvious. Native blueberries, persimmons and gooseberries are just a few of the many American foods that have fallen from favor (there’s a great book on the subject by Raymond Sokolov called Fading Feast).
That’s too bad.  Paw paws are supposedly easy to grow organically and are highly nutritious.  They also have a pedigreed past: It seems they were George Washington’s favorite fruit, Thomas Jefferson grew them at Monticello and Lewis and Clark gathered them on their little trip out west.
And they taste good.  For an opportunity to find that out, I have Jan Huskey to thank. He’s an Idaho native who got interested in the fruit after a friend who’d moved here from Alabama began rhapsodizing about paw paws. (In the wild paw paws grow in the southeast and parts of the midwest).
So, Huskey started doing research. He found a guy in Wilder, Idaho who had a paw paw tree he’d moved up from Arkansas. Along with some good advice, this guy told stories about throwing the aerodynamic fruit at other school kids during his Missouri youth. Huskey’s own dad, who’d grown up in the South, even started dredging up his own paw paw infused past.
That was fourteen or fifteen years ago. Huskey now has twelve mature paw paw trees growing at his place west of Meridian. For the past five years he’s sold them to the Boise Coop and Pollard’s Fruit Stand in Nampa during a season that lasts from mid September to the end of October.
Sadly, I only noticed his paw paws at the Coop in late October. I immediately fell for their custard-like texture and banana, mango, and maple-syrup-tinged taste. (The black, bean-sized seeds are a little hard to negotiate, but Huskey suggests cutting the fruit in half and just squeezing the pulp into your mouth like tropical toothpaste from a tube. No utensils required. Just spit the seeds out when nobody’s looking.)
I hear you can make bread, cookies, pies and ice cream with paw paws too. But that’ll have to wait. I ate my last one yesterday.
Paw Paw photo by Guy Hand
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Guy Hand is a writer, public radio producer and photographer specializing in food and agriculture. |
I know Jan very well and have eaten several pounds of his paw paw’s. i am from Missouri and have been all over the mid-west and south. One of the best things to do with paw paw’s is making paw paw pudding which is a real moist cake. we use the persimmon pudding receipe (google it) and have it for thanksgiving and other holidays. you can squeeze out the pulp and freeze it until you are ready to eat it and it retains all of it’s rich flavor.
Having grown up in the Midwest, I knew paw paws as the Native American “banana” indigenous to the wet understory of most Indiana woods. I could identify paw paw plants by their huge, magnolia-like leaves, but never ate a fruit, possibly because plants were too young or the season was always wrong. Then in September, I tasted my first paw paw grown by Steve Doud, owner of one of Indiana’s oldest orchards. I quickly ate a dozen and came home to Boise with as many as fit in my suitcase. I saved all the seeds, hoping to begin my own tree, and pass some along to others who could grow them. But research on their growing requirements caused me to conclude that our searing, dry, high dessert summers were inhospitable. My only hope was a green-thumb friend with space under her huge oaks next to the river. Then a friend told me they can be purchased at the Co-op, which is supplied by an Emmett orchard. I’m overjoyed to find that Mr. Huskey is the local source of this most amazing fruit, and possibly someone to share advice about growing my own tree of this delicacy.
Valerie, You make me hungry for paw paws reading your comment. And yes, Mr. Huskey does indeed grow them; I’ve talked to him about his trees. So it is possible and should give you encouragement to try growing paw paws yourself. And please let me know how it goes.