Picking the Right Mangoes
Touch and feel around the entire mango. Ripe mangoes will be slightly soft to the touch just like avocados and peaches, but not soft or mushy enough to where your fingers sink into or through the skin. On the other hand, if you do not plan on eating the mango for a few days, you may want to choose a mango with firmer skin and allow the mango to ripen some at home. Ripening mangoes is discussed the a method below.
Inspect the mango visually. The ideal mango should be football-shaped, so you should choose mangoes that are full, plump and rounded, especially around the stem. Sometimes ripe mangoes will have brown spots or speckles, which is perfectly normal. Do not pick flat or thin mangoes because they are likely to be stringy. Avoid choosing mangoes with wrinkled or shriveled skin because they will no longer be ripe. Ataulfo mangoes, however, are often very wrinkly and soft before they're perfectly ripe, so try to learn about the different varieties before deciding. The differences are covered below in a subsequent section.
Smell mangoes near their stems. Ripe mangoes will always have a strong, sweet, fragrant and fruity aroma around the stem. A ripe mango has a smell somewhat like melon, but also like pineapple, with a little hint of carrot thrown in. Ripe mangoes smell wonderful and sweet. If it smells like you'd want to eat it, you're in business. Since mangoes have a high natural sugar content, they will ferment naturally, so the sour, alcoholic odor is a distinctive sign the mango is no longer ripe. Stay away from mangoes that smell sour or like alcohol because these mangoes may be overripe.
Look at color last. In general, the color of mangoes is not the best way to look for ripeness. Since the colors of ripe mangoes can be bright yellow, green, pink, or red depending on the variety and season, color alone won't necessarily tell you much about the ripeness of a mango. Instead, familiarize yourself with the different varieties of mangoes and the seasons in which they thrive to learn more about what you're looking for.
Learn about the varieties of different mangoes. Since mangoes have different colors and slightly different flavors depending on the current season and the region they come from, you may want to learn how to identify certain types of mangoes to heighten your overall experience with them. There are 6 different types of mangoes.
Selecting a Variety of Mango
Pick Ataulfo mangoes for a sweet and creamy flavor. Ataulfos have smaller seeds and more flesh. They are vibrant yellow and are small and shaped like an oval. Ataulfos are ripe when their skin turns deep gold and may develop small wrinkles when they are fully ripe. Ataulfos come from Mexico and are usually available from March through July.
Pick Francis mangoes if you like rich, spicy and sweet flavors. Francis mangoes have bright yellow skin with green overtones and are usually oblong or shaped like the letter S. Francis mangoes are ripe when their green overtones fade away and the yellow hues become more golden. Francis mangoes are grown on small farms throughout Haiti and are usually available from May through July.
Choose Haden mangoes for rich flavor with aromatic overtones. Haden mangoes are bright red with green and yellow overtones and small white dots. Haden mangoes are usually medium or large with oval or round shapes and are ripe when the green overtones begin changing to yellow. Haden mangoes are from Mexico and are only available during April and May.
Pick Keitt mangoes for a sweet, fruity flavor. Keitts are oval-shaped and medium to dark green with a pink blush. The skin of Keitt mangoes will remain green even when they are ripe. Keitt mangoes are grown in both Mexico and the United States and are usually available in August and September.
Choose Kent mangoes for a sweet and rich flavor. Kent mangoes come in large, oval shapes and are dark green with a dark red blush. Kent mangoes are ripe when yellow overtones or dots begin to spread over the skin of the mango. Kent mangoes come from Mexico, Peru, and Ecuador and are available from January to March and June to August.
Pick Tommy Atkins mangoes for a mild and sweet flavor. Tommy Atkins mangoes will have a dark red blush with some green, orange, and yellow accents and are oblong or oval-shaped. The only way to test the ripeness of Tommy Atkins mangoes are to feel them, since their color will not change. Tommy Atkins mangoes are grown in Mexico and other regions in South America and are available from March to July and from October to January.
Harvesting Mangoes
Harvest mangoes about 100 to 150 days after flowering. For most varieties of mango, each blossom you see on a healthy tree will produce fruit. You'll see dark green fruit start to form and gradually grow in size over the next three months. Start checking the tree around the 90 day mark to see if they're starting to ripen.
Watch for the mangoes to change color. Somewhere around the three month mark, the mangoes will start to change color to their ripened shade and become somewhat soft. You may also notice some mangoes falling off around the ground. These are signs the mangoes are ready to start being picked. When you see some that are ripe, all of the other fruit that are roughly the same size are fine to also pick, as they'll be at their peak of ripeness in a day or two, left on the counter. If you plan on selling them at a market, it's probably better to pick them a little early. Fruit-ripened mangoes are much better than mangoes picked green and allowed to ripen indoors. Do what's best and most convenient, but if you can, try to let them become as ripe as possible on the tree before picking them. You'll never taste such a delicious mango.
Shake or thrash the tree. The easiest and most simple way to get at those high mangoes is to shake the tree and pick them up, or catch as many as possible. If you're brave, you can stand under the branches with big fruit baskets and try to catch them as they fall to avoid bruising, but it's usually a better idea to pick them up off the grass, where they'll probably fall just as softly. When a few start falling by themselves, they're probably ready to be harvested, and maybe even overripe. You don't have to wait for them to fall to the ground by themselves before you start picking them. Young or brittle trees should not be shaken, but the branches should instead be thrashed with lengths of rope, or long wooden dowels. If you're concerned about the thickness of the tree trunk, don't shake it.
Use a fruit picking basket, or improvise one. Because mangoes are such a delicate fruit when ripe, some pickers prefer to get at the mangoes in a more sophisticated way, by using a picking basket. Essentially, this is a long pole with a metal claw on the end, perfect for getting high tree fruit like apples, pears, plums, and mangoes. Use the rake tips to coax each mango off the tree and drop into the basket gently. It's a very effective way of getting to high fruit and if you've got a lot of fruit to pick, these make a great investment. They're commonly available at seed suppliers and rural outfitters, though you can also improvise one yourself with the right tools. Buy the longest, lightest dowel you can find (or of a length appropriate to match the tree). Use a small metal bucket, the like of which is used for golf balls or gardening supplies, and use duct tape to attach it to the end of the dowel. To create a nice claw for picking, take the head off of a metal rake and attach the spines to the lip of the bucket.
Ripening and Cutting Mangoes
Leave on the counter in cool temperature. If your mango isn't quite ripe, leave it out on the counter in relatively cool room temperature for a few days to ripen some. For most mangoes, between two and four days is usually enough time to soften and become ready to eat. Mangoes that were picked especially green will sometimes take much longer, and in fact may never ripen like you want them to. If a mango hasn't ripened in five or seven days, it's probably not going to get any riper. In hotter temperatures, mangoes will ripen more quickly, and may go from green to overripe in a very short amount of time. If it's hot and you're not in some temperature-controlled air conditioning, keep a close eye on them. They'll probably be fine.
Refrigerate when the mango reaches the desired ripeness. After your mango softens, it's fine to put it in the fridge if you want to keep it at its peak of ripeness for a couple of days before you want to eat it. It's also great to chill mangoes, because a cold mango is a delicious treat. In the fridge, the cold will slow the ripening process, so the fruit won't ripen any longer and will last for up to 4 days longer than they will on the counter, where they'll continue ripening. You don't have to refrigerate them, however, if you want to eat them quickly.
Rinse the outside of the mango before slicing. While most people choose to not eat the mango skin, because it has a bitter flavor and a stringy texture, it's still a good idea to rinse mangoes on the outside before slicing into them, especially mangoes you've purchased at the store. Traces of chemicals, germs, and other gunk can work its way onto the fruit in the grocery store, making it a good idea to rinse them off, rub them thoroughly with your hands, and prepare a clean surface on which to slice them up. Mango skin is perfectly edible and in fact extremely high in compounds that help control receptor molecules called PPARs, which help to regulate cholesterol, glucose, and are thought to have some anti-cancer properties. Give it a rinse and give it a try! If you want to try the skin, you can just eat the mango whole like an apple, or you can peel it and go right at the fruit, eating your way around it.
Cut to the side of the stone. The best way to slice up a mango is to hold it upright on the small end, with the stem end facing toward the ceiling. Run a sharp kitchen knife into the flesh just to the side of the stem, cutting alongside the pit on the inside. You should feel something hard that will push your knife off to the side. That means you're doing it perfectly. Do the same thing on the other side of the stem, then trim off the extra flesh on the two sides of the fruit. You should be left with a furry-ish stone that still probably has a lot of fruit on it. Chef's rights: you get to chew off that bit.
Cut cross-hatches into the flesh of each side. One of the cleanest ways to get the fruit out of the skin at this point is to use your knife and run it through the inside of the flesh, cutting a cross-hatch pattern in the fruit. Depending on the size of the mango, you might want to cut chunks anywhere from a 1/2 in. to an inch. It's best to do this while the fruit is sitting on a cutting board, even though it might be easier to hold the skin in your hand. It's very easy to cut straight through the skin and poke into your hand, which can result in a nasty cut.
Pop the skin backward and cut out the chunks. Once you've hatched up the fruit, push on the skin-side to pop the fruit chunks out and up and make them easy to cut off the skin. Slice them off carefully into a bowl, or bite them off like candy. Enjoy!
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