Opal apples6/17/2023 These non-GMO apples are grown exclusively grown at Broetje Orchards located along the Snake River in Prescott, WA (go WA state!) which is just a few hours from me. Gone are the days of coating your apple slices in lemon juice to make them not brown. While the outside color is interesting, the lack of color on the inside is even more interesting (they don’t brown and just naturally resist oxidation!). □ The first thing you notice about the apple is its color…bright yellow, which is pretty hard to miss. So when Opal Apples and Kitchen Play asked if I wanted to create a dessert using Opal Apples I said sure without really knowing what kind of apple it was. I end up eating it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Do I not like apples? Ha! Just the opposite in fact! I have a small problem with eating whatever apple dessert I make in about a 24 hour period. Reach for it if you can't find any Pink Ladies.You would think with me living in Washington State that there would be more apple desserts on this blog, it only makes sense. Still it is readily available nowadays and definitely a better choice than most other supermarket apples. It is also self sterile, which won't please suburban gardeners who only want or have room for one apple tree. This makes it of limited use as a cooking apple (might good for apple sauce). Opal feels hard and crunchy but when you bite into it the flesh gives way almost as if you are biting into a cantaloup or melon. I like my apples dense, with a crisp crunch. What pulls my ranking down from a 4 to a 3 is the loose density of the flesh a fault it shares with Honeycrisp. You get a little more depth than with say a Honeycrisp or mass produced Golden Delicious. ![]() The flavor is quite good but not memorable. The skin is a brilliant golden yellow that brings to mind the fruit of folklore and myth. So many apples marketed as "golden" are more often than not a pale unappetizing greeny-yellow. The size and shape is exactly what you want from an apple and the color is absolutely gorgeous. Opal definitely gets my vote for one of the most attractive apples. I also like Cameo and Empire(among other recently sampled varieties), but I actually did find some flavor and crispness inconsistency with apples of both of those varieties. Its mostly sweet with a slight tartness, and of the 3 that I've bought at different times over the past few weeks, I am yet to find an Opal that isn't crisp/crunchy, despite a previous reviewer's comments about them being too soft. I actually like the flavor of Opal a little better than H.C. ![]() The cheapest of the 21 varieties is Opal, at $1.49/lb, compared with $3.99/lb for H.C.!! I had tried Pink Lady and Honeycrisp first, but then I decided to try the cheaper apples, because Honeycrisp and Pink Lady are literally 2-3 times the cost of almost every other variety. Anyway, instead of just taking bites out of them, I cut them into slices, and I decided to try as many of the 21 varieties of apples that are carried by my local Shop Rite. For some reason I never particularly liked them.
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