How to Pick the Best Apples at the Orchard or Grocery Store

It’s officially autumn. That means the trees are heavy with apples, ripe for snacking and baking. Whether you enjoy a trip to an orchard or prefer scouting the produce at the store or farmers market, knowing how to pick apples will improve your experience. No one wants to arrive home with apples that are bruised, mealy or unripe!

Thankfully, there are tried-and-true methods for finding the perfect fruit.

How to Pick Good Apples

COURTESY @GETTYSTEWART/TIKTOK

While there are thousands of different types of apples in the world, one thing they have in common is the set of signals they send out to indicate their quality. Some of those, like seed color and the apple’s overall flavor, can’t be investigated before buying. But other tactics can be used to appraise apples before you bring them home.

Check the color of the apple skin

On TikTok, food educator Getty Stewart says that if you know what color a variety of apple is supposed to be when it’s ripe, you’ll be able to compare the apples against that ideal. For example, a mostly red apple with streaks of green and/or yellow isn’t necessarily still ripening. Even fully ripe apples can have this mixture of colors because of where the skin was most exposed to sunlight (the redder areas) versus where the apple grew in the shade (the green and yellow areas).

Make sure the apples are easy to pick

When you spy a good-looking apple on the branch, pluck it off with a steady, gentle hand. The ripe apples should come away fairly easily, with little twisting or pulling required to free their stems from the branch. When humans aren’t around to do the picking, apples fall off the tree when they’re good and ready—so no apple worth harvesting should put up much of a fight.

Choose blemish-free apples

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In their months of growing, apples can accrue many blemishes: blight, bruises, grub holes, punctures and the like. All of these can cause the apple to rot more quickly, as they expose the interior to air, bacteria, pests and other hazards.

Check the entire exterior of the apple before selecting it, taking extra care to check the base and around the stem for any imperfections. The apple should have smooth, tight skin with uniform firmness and it shouldn’t yield to gentle pressure from your hand.

Next Up: Learn how to make the most of your next trip to an apple orchard.