summer produce
22 guides
Guides tagged summer produce.
Eggplant
Eggplant is a summer vegetable with tender flesh that becomes silky when cooked well. It loves oil, high heat, garlic, tomatoes, herbs, and smoky flavors.
Summer Squash
Summer squash includes yellow squash, crookneck, straightneck, pattypan, and related tender-skinned squashes. It cooks quickly, spoils faster than winter squash, and is best when picked young.
Basil
Basil is the signature summer herb — bright, aromatic, and versatile. Growing it at home is the easiest way to have a good herb on hand, but local farm basil at a farm stand beats supermarket plastic-pack herbs by a long way.
Bell Peppers
Bell peppers are the same fruit at different stages of ripeness — green is unripe, red is fully ripe, and yellow and orange fall in between. That distinction explains nearly everything about how they taste and how to use them.
Blueberries
Blueberries are one of the more successful summer fruits — they store well, freeze perfectly, and the local varieties have a depth of flavor supermarket berries rarely match.
Corn
Sweet corn is a time-sensitive crop — the sugars in the kernels begin converting to starch the moment the ear is picked. Local corn eaten the day of harvest is a different vegetable than supermarket corn shipped from days away.
Cucumbers
A good cucumber from a local farm in midsummer — thin-skinned, cool, and snappy — is a different experience from the waxed, seedy cylinders shipped year-round at supermarkets. Knowing what to look for makes the difference.
Fresh Herbs
Fresh herbs are the fastest way to transform a dish. A handful of basil, a few sprigs of thyme, or a tablespoon of chopped parsley changes a plate in a way that dried herbs simply cannot replicate — and local farms grow varieties that never appear in supermarket bundles.
Green Beans
A fresh green bean from a summer farm stand — snapping cleanly, bright and grassy — is a completely different experience from the limp, dull beans at the supermarket. Green beans are one of the most improved by local sourcing.
Peaches
Peaches are the most short-windowed fruit of the year — and the one where ripeness matters most. A local peach at peak ripeness is the taste of summer in a way no other fruit quite is.
Strawberries
Strawberries are the first real fruit of summer — and the produce where the gap between local and shipped is widest. A ripe local strawberry tastes of strawberry. A shipped one tastes of pink water.
Sweet Corn
Sweet corn loses its sugar to starch conversion the moment it is picked — sometimes measured in hours, not days. Local corn bought the day it is harvested is a different vegetable from supermarket corn. No other produce makes the case for local sourcing more viscerally.