Despite my best efforts I have never been able to source a halawi date, only medjool. Still looking!
Benjamin Stone / Originally posted on Are dates good for you?
Answer:
I never liked dates even though I knew how good they were for me. They were dry, desiccated and tasted, well, datey. But that was before I discovered there were all these heavenly plump, moist varieties that didn’t taste like dates at all!
Barhi dates used to be my favorite. I’d freeze them to turn them from wet to chewy (they never get hard) and then eat them with apples (honeycrisp, mmm) as one of my favorite snacks for the caramel apple taste of my youth.
Locally, you should be able to find good medjool dates in middle eastern and Indian grocery stores (great place to also get cheap spices and amazing mangoes starting around April), but for the too-moist-to-be-sold-commercially varieties you have to go online. I have tried dates from most of the major online retailers and always go back to the Date People. I am averse to commercial endorsements, but I’ve never tasted better dates from any other source. Their annual harvest comes in around my birthday (October 25!) and last year as a present to myself I splurged and got the 12 variety sampler–and I’m glad I did because I discovered my new favorite–khadrawi dates. They taste like butterscotch!
Image Credit: storem / flickr
