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Guava
Psidium guajava · Tropical fruit
1 variety40 pairings
The guava (Psidium guajava) is the intensely fragrant fruit of a small tropical tree in the myrtle family — round to pear-shaped, with thin green-to-yellow skin and sweet-tart flesh that may be white, pink or deep red and is studded with small, hard, edible seeds. Its musky, floral perfume can fill a room from across the house, and the fruit is eaten fresh, juiced, and cooked down into the firm paste known as guava cheese or goiabada.
Picking a good onedrag
Hard, green, unscentedSoft, boozy, weeping
Colour breakSkin lifting to yellow, flesh still firm. Dices cleanly for salad and salsa, and it is ripe in a day or two.Buy it
SkinGreen paling towards yellow
GiveFirm, just yields at the shoulder
SmellSweet musk close to the skin
Crown and stemCalyx browning, scar still dry
What to look for, from hard, green, unscented to soft, boozy, weeping.
What one gives you
78%
Usable yield
55 g peeled · USDA counts the skin as refuse, though it is edible
71 g
Typical weight
one specimen
Keeping ittap a band
Not fridge cold: under about 8 C a green guava scalds, pits and then fails to ripen. Only fully ripe fruit takes 5 C, and only briefly.
Humidity
90-95%
Drying is its main fault: in dry air the thin skin goes dull yellow and wrinkles within days. A loose bag or a covered bowl holds it.
Airflow
Loose, single layer
Loose and in a single layer. Sealed plastic stalls ripening; stacked fruit bruises brown, and the bruises let rot in.
Ripens itself, and its neighbours
It makes its own ethylene as it ripens and answers to more, so it hurries whatever sits beside it: broccoli yellows, lettuce russet-spots.