Ingredient

Date

A date is a fruit dried on the palm, and the differences between varieties are large: some are soft and caramel-like, some are firm and nutty, and the compressed block sold for baking is a different proposition again. Choosing the wrong one is why a recipe sometimes turns out cloying or gritty.

The varieties worth knowing

Medjool

Large, soft, wrinkled, deep brown, intensely caramel. Eaten out of hand or stuffed. Expensive and the best raw.

Deglet Nour

Smaller, firmer, paler, semi-dry with a nutty honey flavour. The standard cooking date and much cheaper.

Barhi

Very soft, almost liquid inside, sold fresh in season. Sometimes sold yellow and crisp at the khalal stage, which is astringent and quite different.

Halawi and Khadrawi

Soft, mid-sized, sweet and buttery. Good all-rounders.

Block dates

Chopped dates compressed into a slab, often with added glucose. Fine for a sticky toffee pudding, poor for eating.

Why some are soft and some are dry

Dates ripen through four stages on the palm, and the stage at which they are picked decides everything. At rutab they are soft, moist and high in water; at tamr they have dried further on the tree and are chewier and more concentrated.

Soft varieties like Medjool are picked and sold close to the rutab stage and keep their moisture. Semi-dry varieties like Deglet Nour dry further and become firm.

This matters in cooking. A soft date melts into a batter or a sauce; a firm one holds its shape and needs soaking. Recipes rarely say which they mean, and the difference decides the outcome.

What to do with them

• Stuffed — with an almond, with tahini, with a walnut and a scrape of soft cheese. A Medjool and a good almond needs nothing else.
• Soaked and blitzed into a paste, which is the base of sticky toffee pudding and of a great many no-bake bars.
• In a tagine or a slow-cooked stew with lamb, where the sweetness balances spice and the fruit collapses.
• With bacon or a salty cheese, where the sugar and salt work against each other.
• Date syrup, which is simply dates cooked with water and strained, and is a genuinely useful sweetener.
• Chopped into a salad with bitter leaves and a sharp dressing.
• In a chutney with tamarind, which is the standard Indian sweet chutney.

Stoning and softening

1. Slit each date lengthways with a small knife and lift out the stone. It comes free easily in a soft date.
2. For firm dates, if the stone resists, roll the fruit under your palm first to loosen it.
3. To soften hard dates, cover with boiling water and leave for ten minutes, then drain. For baking, use bicarbonate of soda in the soaking water — it breaks the fruit down further and is standard in sticky toffee pudding.
4. To make a paste, blitz softened dates with a little of their soaking liquid until smooth.
5. Store opened dates in a sealed container. Soft varieties keep better in the fridge, where they firm up; bring them back to room temperature before eating.

Common questions