Taken from my blog: Figboss.com "So you put in all this work to get your fig tree healthy, off on the right foot, you feed it, you stake the branches, you give it in the light that it needs and the tree does well, but when you harvest your figs, they aren't that good. There's a lot of reasons for that. Typically the figs off of young trees can taste pretty bad. Other times we overwater our trees. Too much soil moisture lowers the brix and dilutes the flavor of the fruits. Maybe we even have a lot of rain that comes in and that causes them to split, mold or ferment.
In this blog post, I'm going to share a way to get not just tastier figs, but to also get a whole different dimension of figs that you're not used to. To put it simply, when you harvest your figs, even when picked a little early we can improve them by putting them in the fridge. Cut them in half and place them on a dry plate with the skin side down! Make sure there's no additional moisture on the skin or the plate and make sure you give each fig space, so that they're not touching. Over the next 2-3 weeks, your figs in the fridge will slowly dehydrate. Unlike an oven or a typical dehydrator, this is dehydrating them slowly and so you can very easily control the moisture levels within. "
All right you guys, this is Ross the Fig Boss. In today's video we have a really nice spread
of figs, don't we? This is a thing of beauty, isn't it? We also have a lot of dried figs here
actually that I've been dehydrating in the dehydrator and so we have a lot to talk about
because I wanted to show you guys and teach you guys about my best kept secret of really just
how do you get better tasting fruits? How do you get better tasting figs? I think we all want that
no matter where we live. I think caprification would certainly help but other than that we have
some really important tips so stay to the end, watch this video in full, share it with your
friends, check out our blog figboss.com, hit that subscribe button because this video here is worth
its weight in gold. If you guys were, by the way, at the Staten Island Fig Festival recently,
you actually got to taste these amazing figs for yourself and if you were at that festival,
shout out to you guys. I really appreciate you guys got to come there. I got to meet you guys,
we got to talk, it was a great time and I gave you guys, for anyone that was there,
that was a viewer of mine, came up and said hello, thanked me for what I did, you guys got to taste
some of these amazing figs and if you were there, put it down in the comments just how amazing these
figs were. Let everybody know that I ain't just making this stuff up. So we also did a tasting,
by the way, that we talked about in our live stream episode not too long ago where I brought
a lot of my local friends, my real life friends, some people also who grow figs, my friend Chris,
my friend Romeo, shout out to you guys, and we did a tasting here with a very similar phenomenon
that we did to get this amazing quality which is actually a form of dehydrating them. So just like
these dehydrated figs here that came out of the dehydrator, I also in a way dehydrated some of
these. They're at different states here of different levels of dehydration so far. A lot of
them, believe it or not, haven't gone that far in this process. But what I do is, and you guys can't
tell anybody, okay, I cut them in half just like you see here on the plate. I put them skin side down
on the plate and then I stick them in the fridge and they slowly dehydrate in the fridge. The only
thing you got to watch out for is one, you got to make sure there's no moisture on the bottom. Some
of these figs, for whatever reason, they maybe are a little wet when we harvest them. Dry them all off.
Make sure they're all nice and dry. There's no moisture on the plate because that will just
contribute to mold. We don't want any moisture being trapped anywhere on this plate and on these
figs. We want the moisture to leave the figs because when the water is evaporated out, we have
a much more intensely flavored and even maybe even a higher brix fruit, right? The sugar content
is definitely more concentrated. But the other really important thing I think is often overlooked
because it's not just enough to stick them in the fridge like this. I have these figs here I
dehydrated. I put these in the dehydrator for a reason because when I put them on a plate like
this, they're not ripe enough or the brix, I imagine, is not high enough. Maybe they were picked after
the rain. Maybe they were damaged by the rain. Maybe for whatever reason, the figs are not really
of the highest quality to begin with. So by putting a low quality fig on this plate, you're not going
to really see the same results. Of course, you're going to see good results, better results. So even
if it is a bit underripe, my suggestion, either make jam out of it, cook with it, put it in the
dehydrator, or put it on a plate like this. But I find that if you don't have a high enough brix to
begin with, by putting them in the fridge over the course of five days to three weeks or so,
it's just going to be maybe a little bit of trouble because figs often spoil in the fridge.
They spoil a lot quicker outside of the fridge, but if you don't have a high enough brix,
you're probably not going to see the results that I'm seeing. And so the brix, by the way,
starts with you as the grower, in that if you can 100% control or have a really good handle
on the soil moisture that your trees are receiving, so if you're growing them in containers,
try not to overwater them. The more water that's available to these figs,
in excess of what they need, that water is then pumped into the fruits themselves. And the fruits
themselves then have a lower brix. They then have a worse flavor and more water. And the same thing
happens when it rains, in that the rain hits the skin of the figs and absorbs right into the skin,
depending on the variety, depending on the quality of the skin. And so when the water is injected in
the fruits rather than the, you know, either it's the plant itself that put the water into the fruit
from the roots and is storing the water there, or maybe it is just from the rain, whatever the case
may be, we have a problem. We have a lower brix that way. The other thing that's really important
is we want to pick them at the right time. So it's not enough, by the way, guys, to just put them on
this plate. You also got to take care of the other stuff. You got to pick them at the right time.
Every day the figs ripen on the tree, the better they taste, the better they concentrate, the more
the sugars actually have a chance to be pumped into the fruit from the carbohydrates that the
trees produce from photosynthesis. It's the same thing again with the water content. So, you know,
this is a really nice tip. I hope you guys enjoy it. I hope it works for you. But you want to bring
this even to a higher level, do some of the other things I've mentioned and you'll have some of the
best tasting fruits, I'm telling you. Anyway, guys, that was this video. Again, check out all the stuff
that we do. Hit that subscribe button. Go to our blog figboss.com. Go to the bottom, put in your
email, subscribe to the newsletter. You'll be notified when we get new blog posts. And yeah,
thanks for everybody coming out to the festival. We'll talk to everybody later, all right?
Take care, guys. We'll see you for the next one.
