By Philipp Corfman
Take a break from the plow
Come pick some pawpaws with me now
-“Pickin PawPaws”, The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band
On September 13th, 2024, thousands gathered in southeast Ohio for the 26th Annual PawPaw Festival, a weekend of music, food, and competition (including the famous pawpaw eating contest—Clevelander Anton Krieger held the title in 2022 and 2023). For those in attendance, life would be difficult to imagine without the annual ritual of harvesting, foraging, eating, and celebrating pawpaws. Most, however, have never heard of pawpaws.
Almost everyone who knows me has heard the “pawpaw spiel” by now. For those who haven’t: pawpaws are the largest native fruit in North America, and Ohio’s official state native fruit. They have thin, green skin and are roughly the size and shape of potatoes. Pawpaws have light orange flesh with a soft, custard-like texture. The fruits grow naturally in elegant conical trees that can be found in forests across the Midwest. Among other ecological benefits, these trees help provide crucial habitats for pollinators, including gorgeous zebra swallowtails.
What sets pawpaws apart is their taste. They have the subtle tropical sweetness of a banana mixed with a hint of mango (hence one of their nicknames: “Indiana Banana”). They taste like something that shouldn’t grow in Ohio—and yet, pawpaw trees thrive even through Ohio winters.
This mild but decadent flavor and creamy texture make pawpaw both a delicacy in its own right and a highly versatile ingredient. The Ohio PawPaw Festival features food trucks that sell all varieties of pawpaw delicacies. Alongside the expected pawpaw bread and pawpaw ice cream were pawpaw curry, pawpaw barbecue, pawpaw spring rolls, and countless kegs of pawpaw beer. On top of that, pawpaws are something of a “super-food”, packed with fiber, amino acids, vitamins, and minerals.
Rural Midwesterners have been “pickin pawpaws” in the woods for centuries. However, improvements in cross-breeding, grafting, and other techniques have given rise to large-scale pawpaw cultivation in recent decades. Pawpaws are also favorites of urban farmers, who appreciate their picturesque trees and low maintenance requirements.
That's how I learned about pawpaws. In August, 2021, a friend invited me to a tour and tasting at a small orchard in Lakewood run by pawpaw legend Justin Husher. After one taste, I was hooked, and I embraced the pawpaw lifestyle with the zeal of a convert. I’ve now been to three pawpaw festivals and have four pawpaw trees growing in my front yard.
Pawpaws have become something of a fad in the early 2020s, with more and more people embracing them as a tasty and sustainable superfood (The New Yorker described them as the next acai). Unfortunately, there is a reason that pawpaws are not that well-known. They have thin skin that bruises at the slightest pressure or jostling, making pawpaws extremely difficult to transport. They also have a short shelf life—if you’re lucky, they’ll last a few days in the refrigerator. You are not likely to see pawpaws at Giant Eagle anytime soon.
That’s something else that makes pawpaws so special. In an age of preservatives and supermarkets, many of us think about food only as a commodity to be bought and consumed. Rarely do we consider food as a living thing; as part of an ecosystem, bound up in seasonal cycles, following the same rules as the rest of nature, and carefully cultivated by human beings. Delicious, delicate pawpaws force us to think about food in this way. To seek them out and savor them in those precious few weeks in September we have access to them; to buy them directly from the farmers who harvested them; to save our seeds and, if we have a bit of land or even just a pot, grow our own pawpaws.
We’re near the end of this year’s pawpaw season. But I hope that, next year, you’ll give them a try. And I hope to see you at the 27th Annual Ohio PawPaw Festival.
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