September is Pawpaw Picking Season: Try These Tips, Tricks and Tasty Treats

Two years ago, I came upon a grove of pawpaw trees in the woods. The spindly trunks were clustered together in the forest understory, branches bending from the weight of the largest edible fruit native to the United States. Some of the green, kidney-shaped pawpaws had already fallen to the forest floor—a sure sign of ripeness.

I shook one of the trees. Thud. Thud thud thud. The fruit fell to the ground, and I was giddy. I had foraged my first pawpaws.

The act of finding and eating this knobby native fruit seemed to open a new dimension. Sara Bir, a Marietta, Ohio-based chef, food writer and author of “The Fruit Forager’s Companion” and “The Pocket Pawpaw Cookbook,” describes it as a magical experience.

“You get pulled into this mirror world that exists with us all the time, but you’re looking at it differently. What else is out here that I haven’t noticed?” Bir says. “Pawpaws are gateway drugs, so to speak, to other wild edibles, but also to us being part of a larger natural system.”

The fruit’s native range, aka the Pawpaw Belt, encompasses much of the Midwest and eastern part of the U.S., stretching slightly northward into Michigan and reaching Deep South states from Louisiana to South Carolina. But Ohioans seem to have a particular affinity for pawpaws. “It’s not what you would expect to see in Ohio,” Bir says. “It’s like a glimpse at this bizarro-world Ohio.”

The pawpaw—asimina triloba—is the only member of the custard-apple family that doesn’t dwell in the tropics. The tree’s huge, oblong leaves look tropical, and the fruit’s yellow-orange, custardlike flesh tastes like a mash-up of exotic fruits from other continents: mango, pineapple, banana.

So why don’t more people know about pawpaws? And why aren’t they in grocery stores? For one, they’re only ripe for a brief period each year. And once you pick a pawpaw, you better eat it—the fruit doesn’t counter ripen well, and the shelf life is short.

Still, pawpaw popularity is rising, and it’s happening from the ground up, unlike most food trends, which tend to originate at the top. “Some billionaire puts a bunch of funding behind pomegranates, and then there’s pomegranate juice in your grocery store,” Bir says. “But pawpaws, because of how they grow and how they behave, they’re really difficult to market.”

In Central Ohio, pawpaws tend to ripen in mid-to-late-September; the annual Ohio Pawpaw Festival, which takes place Sept. 16–18 in the Athens County village of Albany, is a good timestamp for pawpaw season. You’ll find fruit to purchase at the fest and sometimes at local farmers markets. You can also start your own pawpaw grove, but you’ll need two or more trees, and most will make you wait several years for fruit.

If you’re ready to forage, Bir recommends asking around. “Just let people know that you’re interested somehow,” she says, “and that’s when the pawpaw solidarity network will show up for you.” Foragers on social media can help, too. Columbus’ Alexis Nikole Nelson, aka @blackforager on Instagram, is a wildly popular pawpaw acolyte who wrote the introduction to Bir’s “The Pocket Pawpaw Cookbook.”

To find the trees, head to sloping, wooded areas near water and look for groups of short trees with thin trunks and long leaves. In the spring, pawpaw trees are one of the last to leaf out, and in autumn, they’re one of the first to turn gold, making them easier to spot.

In early fall, you might smell the pawpaws first. If the fruit is within reach, give it a little tug and it should fall into your hand. “If you have to yank it off, then it’s not ripe,” Bir says. For pawpaws out of reach, give the tree a gentle shake and listen for thuds (but don’t look up).

Unripe pawpaws are hard and have a matte finish; the ready-to-eat fruits are softer and glossier. “If you put your thumb on the fruit and you can feel the flesh yielding to your pressure, that’s a good sign that it’s ripe. If it’s firm, you should just leave it on [the tree],” Bir says.

Recipe:Sara Bir’s buttermilk-based pawpaw lassi

Once you’ve harvested your “prairie bananas,” remove the skins and large seeds. Bir recommends pairing the custardlike flesh with dairy to make smoothies and yogurt parfaits. Or try Bir’s buttermilk-based pawpaw lassi recipe linked above. You can also make pawpaw pudding, cornbread and cakes, but cooking “doesn’t help the flavor,” Bir says. “Any time you’re consuming it raw, that’s the best way.”

For Bir, it doesn’t get much better than eating a pawpaw in the forest, right where you foraged it. “You can, and should, tear it apart with your hands,” she writes in “The Pocket Pawpaw Cookbook.” “Raise it to your lips and slurp. It will be sweet and creamy and totally new—every pawpaw in the woods is like your first pawpaw all over again.”

This story is from the September 2022 issue of Columbus Monthly.