A Pomelo Review

I tried a pomelo, aka shaddock, yesterday. It is a hefty, deep green citrus fruit. I bought one at Stop & Shop for $4.00. My experiences with homegrown peaches this late summer turned me against the hard, prematurely picked fruit that predominates in grocery stores. Organic or not, the issue isn't the provenance of the fruit so much as the stage in its life at which it is picked. Since ripe fruit is highly perishable and has to be shipped and displayed for sale around the country, most of the fruit in stores has been picked too soon. Home grown peaches are large, soft, sweet and running with juice. Peaches in grocery stores, from Bread & Circus to Stop & Shop, unless they are locally grown, are more like baseballs: unripe, dry, small and anything but soft.

So my expectations are low for store-bought fruit. The pomelo wasn't very good considering its price. It looks like a very large, unripe (because it's dark green) grapefruit. The skin has the leathery texture of other citrus fruit. The fruit is sectioned and pink, just like pink grapefruit, but the sections are larger. Mine was kind of dry and tough, picked too soon and not quite done ripening, apparently. I only let it sit out for one day at home after I bought it, but I doubt more time would have made much difference.

I measured the thickness of the pomelo's skin after I ate it. It goes from 1/2" to over 1" thick. The edible fruit inside is enveloped by a thick layer of spongy white dermis. I cut it into roughly equal halves like a grapefruit. I sprinkled some sugar on each of the halves. One half at a time, I ate the inside sections with a soup spoon.