It's a Sweet Start to Mango Season

Mango season is here, and it is off to a SWEET start. This is a follow-up to an article I wrote in March on “Looking Ahead to Mango Season.” Since Ian, our lone mango tree had sparse blooms, and we were anxious to see if the fruits would make it to May or June. The first sign was the color - in the sun, the ripe mango looked vibrant with shades of deep red with yellow and orange overtones. Our first mango of the season was ready to be picked!

The first thing my husband did after picking the ripe mango was smell it near the stem - it was sweet, tropically fruity, and ripe. Experts say that your sense of smell is responsible for about 80% of your taste, so it was a big tell that this mango would taste amazing! An unripe mango will have no smell. Most mangos at the supermarkets were grown and imported from Mexico, Haiti, and South America, with a few grown in Florida. Asia holds the title for growing the most mangos in the world – around 75%.

Here in Florida, it is definitely Mango Season, and I was curious to see and taste what local growers are bringing to the local Farmer’s Market. I headed out to the Third Street South Farmers Market in Naples to sample locally grown native varieties. They call mangos the “king of fruits” for their flavor mixes of citrus, pineapples, peaches, and melons. I stopped by the Friendly Burds and chatted with David and Jenny Burd of Naples. David is a local legend when it comes to mangos. Early that morning, there was already a line of locals anxious to taste new varieties, ask David questions on their own backyard mangos or which variety he would recommend for small spaces.

Most supermarket varieties taste like a cross between a peach and a pineapple, and David offered tasting slices of varieties that are a new experience to the average mango consumer. Shoppers also stopped by asking if they could purchase certain varieties from him or if he had experience growing Asia varieties. On his tasting basket was a variety called Nam Doc Mai, a cultivar that originated from Thailand and it is “considered the most sought after mango variety due to its highly sweet, aromatic and fiberless fruit and as a prolific producer. It is what you would call a “dessert” mango and was mostly bred as a sweet treat.

Some cultivars are bred by producers for their hard skin to prevent them from being bruised or cut during shipment –this would be a perfect supermarket variety – but they would not be known for their sweet flavor. If you are in Florida during the mango season, I suggest that you take a tasting trip off the beaten path and seek out local growers offering you the tastes of paradise! You’ll experience Julia, Nam Doc Mai, Lemon Saigon, Philippine Carabao cultivars, and other new-generation cultivars with silky ripe flesh in complex colors and flavors such as pineapple, peach, coconut, vanilla, and my favorite – orange sherbet!

The Friendly Burds also offered other tropical fruits such as tamarind, canistel, packets of freeze-dried jack fruits, apricots, tomatoes, bananas, their own home-grown honey and whatever tropical fruits that are ripe and ready for the market for that Saturday. Last year I enjoyed their Lychee flavored honey, and last Saturday, they had fresh-picked lychee for the market. Most local backyard growers offer chemical-free produce, and I came home with a packet of locally grown ripe tamarind – such a local treat!