Seasonal Spotlight: U-G-L-I You Ain’t Got No Alibi

The Gluttoness — January 31, 2009

So I’m walking around Whole Foods looking for a semi-hard red mango, when I notice some of the gnarliest looking fruit I’ve ever seen. They have the appearance of decrepit grapefruits, left for a year or more to shrivel and decay in the sunshine. In fact, the fruit has such an unsightly aesthetic that they went ahead and named it Ugli Fruit—no point in beating around the bush, right? Marked by rough, wrinkly greenish-yellow skin and unpleasant pot-marks, this fruit even comes equipped with its own confidence-boosting slogan: “The Affliction is only Skin Deep so the Beauty is in the Eating.“™

A relative of the pomelo grapefruit, a citrus hybrid of tangerines and grapefruits, ugli fruit are a unique breed that thrive in wild environments in Jamaica. While the outside may be nothing to look at, the skin is in fact known for its strong citrus fragrance, and the flesh is extremely juicy and sweet like a tangerine. Unlike human aging, the skin actually loses its blemishes with age, gracefully adopting a bright orange hue when fully ripened—the Benjamin Button of the citrus world so to speak. The skin remains a loose covering that shields the citrus, making for easy peeling so that you can quickly enjoy your ugli fruit just as you would any tangerine.

This exotic tangelo hybrid is smaller than a grapefruit, has fewer seeds, and is in season from December to April. It’s high juiciness quotient makes it perfect for a fresh squeezed refreshment. Most importantly though, ugli fruit reinforces the age old belief that it’s what’s on the inside that counts.