Pink guava
Psidium guajava · Tropical fruit
Top 10 pairings
The pink guava is the salmon- to rose-fleshed form of the common guava (Psidium guajava) — round or ovoid, with thin green-to-yellow skin over a deeply perfumed pink interior that is musky, sweet and intensely tropical. Far more aromatic and softer than the crisp white-fleshed types, it is the guava the world drinks: the great majority of guava juice, nectar, purée and pulp is made from pink cultivars, whose colour comes from the carotenoid lycopene.
Picking a good onedrag
Hard, green, unscentedSoft, boozy, weeping
Colour breakBuy itSkin lifting to yellow, flesh still firm. Dices cleanly for salad and salsa, and it is ripe in a day or two.
SkinGreen paling towards yellow
GiveFirm, just yields at the shoulder
SmellSweet musk close to the skin
Crown and stemCalyx browning, scar still dry
These cues are Guava's, and hold across its varieties; where this one differs, its own page says so.
What you get from one
78%
Edible part
55 g peeled · USDA counts the skin as refuse, though it is edible
71 g
Weight each
each one
Keeping ittap a temperature
Below about 8 °C a green guava pits and won't ripen. Only fully ripe fruit can take a brief 5 °C.
90-95%
Humidity
Loose, single layer
Airflow