I'm old enough to remember the joy of new potatoes, Jersey Royals, Cyprus new, or whatever. Now everything tastes of shit, whether it's from Waitrose or the farmers' market. The only decent tasting spuds are frozen mash or McCain's Simply Gorgeous chips. I've grown the most delicious crop in builders buckets outside my back door, so what's so bloody difficult? And don't get me started about apples......
"Free market", innit ?
1) Driving incentive for farmer is to grow as *much*, as *cheaply* (cf easily) as possible. Presumably the easiest to grow are the cheapest. And when you consider trade is by *weight* then the temptation to grow and sell varieties which hold a lot of water must immense.2) Thick consumers with zero experience of real taste.
Many years ago, I discovered a gorgeous tomato variety called "SunGold". It retailed briefly and disappeared from trace. (You can still buy seeds for it). In it's place we have SunBurst, SunBlush,SunDream all of which may as well be called "SunShit". I really can't remember the last time I bought tomatoes *anywhere* in the UK. Even (especially) from "farm shops". They are universally bland.
I now know why so many European ex-pats in the UK grow their own veg.
See above.
Have you noticed that the vast majority of supermarket tomatoes have
*very* thick and tough skins?
Your taste buds have got old and crusty, along with the rest of you.
As for tasting like shit, they stopped using human shit to fertilise the fields on the Channel Islands shortly after the war. :-0 But AIUI they've also mostly stopped using the age-old traditional manure of seaweed, which gave Jersey Royals their unique flavour. Gathering it is too much like hard work these days.
They don't do it any more
In message , Stuart Noble writes
Ping Chris H..
You may be remembering back to the time they were shipped packed in soil. At the risk of alerting TNP, this might have something to do with the EU and disease control.
Last seasons Jersey Royals were just as tasty as ever, here. But so called new anything like that if forced is often tasteless. Thinking of out of season stawberries. Look great but taste of nothing.
+1
Its down to the public "demanding" class one fruit and veg necessitating farmers to only plant varieties where taste has been sacrificed in favour of the perfect colour and shape.
I've found recently that fruit from South Africa has had a far superior taste to that grown by our partners in the EU. Most tasteless stuff seems to be grown in France, Spain and Italy with perhaps the Netherlands leading the way with tasteless salad crops.
And then there is the green fruit on sale that starts going rotten long before it can ripen!
Lidl or Aldi sell packs of cherry size tomatoes usually with 3 varieties (black, red and yellow) and these can often have some real tomato taste. However the varieties in these packs can change throughout the year and some varieties are bland. Be aware that you may need to eat them fairly quickly after purchase as once they start going soft they are only suitable for cooking.
Lidl Jersey royals taste fine.
I hope so as I purchased some from Lidl two hours ago
They may well have been stored in a chilled nitrogen atmosphere for heaven knows how long before being offered for sale.
Early new spuds are usually better than stored maincrop and locally grown ones of any sort fresh from your own garden taste much better.
Likewise. The apples sold in supermarkets at this time of year taste like mushy cardboard and have been sat in nitrogen since harvest. A major grower was done for H&S offences relating to their storage system:
It isn't surprising that supermarket varieties largely chosen for maximum yield, uniform size, robust handling thick skins and incredibly long shelf life don't taste particularly good.
I don;t eat many apples but I'm pretty sure my mum that did used to say the goldern delicious had no taste and they came from France.
If there's anyone that knows about apples maybe they can give their top 5 and where they are grown.
Yes, but I think you do better if you buy the not very big, on the vine ones. The cheap ones might be OK for frying but not much else.
The one that I can never find tasting any good now is the radish. When I were little, they had a lovely 'bite', now they taste of nothing. We find McCain's chips to be very good, certainly much better than the local chippy's.
Perhaps the sources of the raw materials are crap, or maybe I need to rephrase that, the wrong sort of crap. Brian
Appearance and long shelf life - that's all the supermarkets care about. Taste and smell don't enter the equation.
...and don't start me on strawberries...
They are dead easy to grow. Clear a bit of ground and put the seed in.
Water in and wait a while. More appropriate to urg but sort of DIY.
Find a better less local chippy then!
"Just as tasty as ever"? Then you've never tasted real Jersey Royals.
They lost their flavour at least 5 years ago - maybe 10 - when seaweed stopped being used as a fertiliser. There may be some farmers who still use it, and if so it might be worth looking for these.
Just Google "Jersey Royals" and "seaweed". You'll find numerous pages and comments from those who miss the flavour that Jersey Royals used to have.
No point. They are all in different towns, and with McCain's at home, why bother?
I haven't seen them for ages.
Coxes are still available in season (just finished). Mostly English, but sometimes New Zealand ones are available for a bit at the end of the season.
Gala is OK, but I'm not all that fussy.
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