RIPE 🌱 Free photo checker
Produce guide

How do you pick fresh asparagus?

By RIPE, checked against a produce manager's cues. Published .

Look for straight spears with tight, dry, closed tips. Asparagus is a cut shoot that is still alive and still growing, and it bends upward toward vertical if you lay it down, so curved or hooking tips mean that bunch has been lying on its side for days. Straight spears were cut recently and kept standing. You can read that from six feet away.

What to check

Looktight compact tips, even color, no slime. A purple tinge on the tips is normal pigment, not a fault.
Feelhold the bunch upright by the middle. Fresh spears stand stiff, old ones bend over. Please do not snap spears at the display to test them, because the broken ones just get thrown away.
Smellgreen and faintly grassy is right. Sour or sulfurous means done.
Buying for whenthe real Northern Hemisphere season is late February into June, peaking in April and May. Asparagus is one of the fastest respiring things in the department: it burns its own sugar to stay alive after cutting, so it tastes sweet on day one, grassy by day three and of very little by day five. That is a flavor clock, not a safety one, and it runs fast.
At home onlystand the bunch upright in an inch of cold water in the fridge, loosely covered. It genuinely drinks, so it stays crisp far longer than lying flat in a drawer.
Common mistakereading wet cut ends as freshness. Asparagus sits on misted racks and in water trays, so damp ends only tell you the sprayers ran. What misting cannot hide is a cut end gone dried, split and woody-white. And thin spears are not more tender: thickness comes from the age of the crown, and thick spears carry more tender flesh inside the fibrous skin.

If they are not perfect: limp asparagus is usually just thirsty. Trim an inch off the base and stand it in cold water in the fridge for an hour and it re-crisps substantially. And do not snap the woody ends off, which throws away far more than you need. Peel the bottom third with a vegetable peeler instead.

Written by the team behind RIPE, a free app that reads a photo of the whole produce pile and rings the ripest ones. Every cue above is one you can check with your own hands, and it all works with no app at all.

Where this comes from

These cues match the public guidance from university extension services. Read them yourself:

People also ask

How can you tell if corn on the cob is fresh?

Feel through the husk: kernels should be plump and tight to the tip, and the silk tips should be brown and slightly damp, which is normal on a mature ear. Full answer

How can you tell if broccoli has gone bad?

Check the cut end of the stalk before you look at anything else. Full answer

How can you tell if mushrooms are still good?

Dry and firm is good, slimy is not. Full answer

Or just show us the one in your hand

Take a photo of a single piece, filling the frame, in decent light. Free, no signup, and it tells you what it cannot see.

Now on Google Play

The whole bin, in one photo.

You just read the cue for one piece. RIPE reads a photo of the entire display, draws numbered rings on the ones worth taking, and tells you why in the same plain words these guides use. Then it remembers what you brought home and nudges you before it turns.

It claims only what a camera can actually see. Every verdict ends by handing the last check back to your hands, which is the part these guides just taught you.

$19 a year, locked
For people who found us before launch. That price stays yours for as long as you keep it, not just the first year.
Get RIPE on Google Play

Nothing is charged now and no card is taken here. We email you one link at launch and $19 a year is held for you, for good. No weekly billing, and no trial that charges you the moment you forget about it.

Keep going

How should you store potatoes and onions?→ How do you keep lettuce and salad greens fresh?→ How do you pick a good butternut squash?→ How can you tell if a bell pepper is fresh?→
All 45 produce guides