Recipe Exchange

Best in lunchbox

There's no category more highly debatable than this one. If you ask the U.S. Apple Association, Red Delicious would win by a mile; this year Red Delicious apples are expected to be harvested 2:1 to any other variety. Gala, Golden Delicious, Granny Smith and Fuji round out the top five apples grown in the United States.

Local growers are dismissive of some of these varieties, which they say sacrifice taste for market share. Apple grower Bob Barthel prefers a crisp sweet apple with a little sass, such as the Honeycrisp or Ginger Gold.

Best keeping apple

The crunchy Honeycrisp and the Ida Red stay fresh longest. Under proper storage conditions, they can last up to six months.

Whatever the variety, apples do best in very cold, humid conditions: 90% humidity and a near-freezing temperature between 30 and 32 degrees.

"If you have an old refrigerator in the basement or garage, you can probably tinker with the temperature control until it provides the right temperature for storing apples," write Greg Patent and Dorothy Hinshaw Patent in "A is for Apple" (Broadway Books, 1999).

Best apples for salads

While other varieties will start to brown as the fruit is being peeled, the Ginger Gold retains the color of its mellow white flesh when sliced and left on the countertop for hours, making it a perfect choice to set on a buffet table or chop into a salad. Fuji and Empire apples also come highly recommended.

Best apple for pies

What choices! A brochure for Barthel's Fruit Farm listed Paula Red, Cortland, Golden Delicious, Ida Red and Jonagold as excellent. All keep their shape and do not bake into mush, as do softer apples such as McIntoshes. Pippins are best, though, says Bob Barthel of Barthel's Fruit Farm in Mequon.

In apple crisps, cakes and other recipes, softer apples can be used in conjunction with the firmer apples listed above.

Best baking apple

"It's important that the apple hold its shape and not fall apart," write the authors of "A is for Apples." Try Rome, Gala and Braeburns instead. "Avoid Fuji, which is too sweet and perfumey, and Macintosh."

Best sauce apple

Early-season apples tend to cook into watery, but tangy sauces; later-season apples produce hearty, full-flavored sauces. Try Jonathan varieties, Gravensteins, McIntosh, Northern Spy and Winesaps. The Cortland and Golden Delicious also earn high marks for chunkier-textured sauce.

Keeping the skins adds flavor and color to the sauce; some varieties, such as Macintosh, cook down while others will always retain chunky bits.

Best multipurpose apple

If you're going to do a little bit of eating and a little bit of baking, the tangy Paula Red is in season now; pretty soon the versatile varieties of Cortland, Golden Delicious and Jonagold will be ready for picking, too.