Healthy Recipes: Picking the Right Apple

By Dana Jacobi
for the American Institute for Cancer Research

The best-tasting apples are locally grown and picked ripe, usually between August and December, depending on where you live. So we are in the middle of prime apple time right now.

Buying local lets you enjoy the most interesting apple varieties – those too fragile to ship, too unproductive to grow in quantity or too particular in flavor to encourage large-scale commercial cultivation. My favorite in this category is the Golden Russet, an heirloom variety with tough skin, cracking hard flesh and gloriously spicy, tart-sweet flavor. When you see heirloom varieties, be adventurous and try them.

Some of today’s popular apples were developed from local varieties into major players. Fujis were unknown beyond the West Coast in the early 1980s, when I first sampled them from a grower at the Hollywood Farmers’ Market in California. Today, they are ubiquitous, while Honeycrisp apples are now moving along this path of brand development.

Commercial growers want you to use their particular variety for everything, but most apples excel at a couple of uses. Honeycrisp apples, for example, are fabulous as is, or with cheese and in salads, but are not as good when cooked. Cortlands, soft, sweet and wet, make terrific applesauce. They turn brown quickly when cut, are soft in salads, and turn almost liquid in a pie.

Commercially grown Fuji apples taste bland compared to those grown by small, local orchards, but they are good in cooked dishes. Slices of Fuji apple hold their shape in a sauté, baked in a crisp or studded in a bread pudding. During cooking, they become moist but not too wet. In a pie, Fujis add bulk but are best when combined with a couple of other, more flavorful varieties, perhaps Jonagold and Granny Smith.

Granny Smith apples are often ideal in savory cooking. Their skin, tough when raw, becomes translucent and tender when cooked Besides holding their shape and turning tender without disintegrating, their tart flavor goes well with meats and poultry.

Apple-Smothered Pork Cutlets

Halve apples. Using melon-baller, scoop out core. Cut each apple crosswise into thin slices. Set sliced apples aside.

Heat oil and butter in large skillet over medium heat. Add pork and cook until chops are white on both sides, about 1 minute on each side. Set chops aside on plate. Increase heat to medium-high. Add onion and cook until translucent, 5 minutes. Add apples, apple cider and thyme. Cover, and simmer on low heat until apples are tender, 12 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Return pork to pan, pushing apples and onions over chops. Reduce heat to medium, and cook until meat is white in center, about 3 minutes, taking care not to overcook. To serve, place 2 chops on each of four dinner plates and spoon over apple and onion, including a generous amount of juices from pan. Serve immediately.

Makes 4 servings

Per serving: 300 calories, 12 g total fat (4 g saturated fat), 23 g carbohydrate,
26 g protein, 3 g dietary fiber, 65 mg sodium.

Something Different is written by Dana Jacobi, author of 12 Best Foods Cookbook and contributor to AICR’s New American Plate Cookbook: Recipes for a Healthy Weight and a Healthy Life.

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The American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) is the cancer charity that fosters research on the relationship of nutrition, physical activity and weight management to cancer risk, interprets the scientific literature and educates the public about the results. It has contributed more than $91 million for innovative research conducted at universities, hospitals and research centers across the country. AICR has published two landmark reports that interpret the accumulated research in the field, and is committed to a process of continuous review. AICR also provides a wide range of educational programs to help millions of Americans learn to make dietary changes for lower cancer risk. Its award-winning New American Plate program is presented in brochures, seminars and on its website, www.aicr.org. AICR is a member of the World Cancer Research Fund International.