Pawpaw, An American Treasure with Michael Judd — WildFed Podcast #150

The pawpaw is a North American native, growing wild in 26 States! But you wouldn’t know it by seeing or tasting it. About the size of a small to medium-sized mango, with a custardy flesh that ranges from creamy white to pumpkin pie orange, you’d swear it's a tropical fruit. But, you’d be wrong, since it is, in fact, a temperate species. Despite its more mild climatic preference, it still boasts quintessential tropical flavor notes. Mango and papaya, pineapple and banana, caramel and some aroma we can only describe as a combination of nutmeg, cinnamon, and clove.

Unlike so many fruits, it isn’t acidic, rather just creamy like a pie filling, or flan. Which is why the tropical fruit family it belongs to is known as the custard apples, or Annonaceae.

Up until recently, Daniel had only tried a few pawpaws, specimens mailed to us by listeners to the show. To taste more, our next step was obvious. We needed to head south. All the way to Frederick, Maryland to meet up with Michael Judd. Michael wrote an excellent little book on raising North America’s largest fruit, called For The Love Of Pawpaws, and this month, the month of September, is prime pawpaw season!

From the moment we arrived there, we were eating pawpaws constantly, as Michael kept a steady stream of them headed directly towards our mouths. Mango-like, orange-fleshed Susquehannas. Vanilla-custardy Shenandoahs, and the hopefully-able-to-grow-here-in-Maine PA Golden, which is a nice, mild, balance of the other two.

Michael is a character like no other. A fun-loving, zany plant person, whose eclectic personality is rivaled only by his hat collection and perhaps by the fruit for which he is a fervent ambassador. He resides in a beautiful, round, straw-bail-construction home with his lovely family, beside a productive food forest with a distinguished pawpaw patch.

He served us more than just raw pawpaws, we had pawpaw ice cream, pawpaw cornbread, and pawpaw pudding too. And not just our bellies, he satiated our minds too, with plenty of pawpaw facts and legends, and we came home with pockets full of pawpaw seeds and a couple of flats of very ripe fruits, whose aromatic bouquet kept us alert through the 10-hour drive north.

Now that Daniel is home, and has fed his wife and friends some pawpaws too, he's wishing we had patches of them here in Maine. But, at least he has a couple dozen in the freezer, which he's been pulling out, peeling, and pulping for my morning smoothie. That’ll have to do until he grows some plants of his own and figures out how to get them to fruit here in zone 5A!

Michael is a blast to be around. If you ever get the chance to work with him or manage to secure a ticket to his quick-to-sell-out pawpaw festival, we highly recommend you do so. If a pawpaw was ever transfigured into flesh, it might just resemble Michael Judd.

Oh, one last thing, our visit with Michael will be featured in an episode of Season 3 of the WildFed TV show on Outdoor Channel so stay tuned for that! We’ll start airing around the beginning of 2023. In the meantime, if you are hearing this in September and you’re in pawpaw country, make it a point to track some down. Either wild, by foraging your local creek and river banks, or by finding a cultivator near you.

Also, you can get on the pre-order list on Foraged.Market — they’ll start shipping as soon as Ohio’s commercial harvest begins. Don’t wait because it's a limited supply! They’ve got a great landing page for all things pawpaw at Foraged.Market/Pawpaws.

You owe it to yourself to taste this American Treasure!

View full show notes, including links to resources from this episode here: https://www.wild-fed.com/podcast/150