Word is that it’s a bumper-crop year for lychee. Commercial farmers like Wailea Ag Group, Onomea and Family Farm on the Hamakua coast of Hawaii island report that there will be plenty of this delicious fruit in Oahu markets in the coming weeks.

Heavy flowering and fruit set, a dry period in January and cool nights are some of the conditions leading to this year’s good crop, according to Chris Yuen of the Family Farm Inc. Yuen grows the bright red kaimana variety, plentiful along the Hamakua coast, especially good for its big, heart-shaped fruit, small seed and fragrant and delicious flesh.

Lychee was among the first of the fruit trees that came to Hawaii with sugar contract laborers from China starting in 1852. It’s a tree sensitive to cold, lack of rain and wind, and takes up to a decade before it become prolific.

Look for lychee in supermarkets and at farmers markets; enjoy them out of hand while they’re in season. Yuen recommends refrigerating lychee in a plastic bag when you get them home. If you let them sit on a counter and the skin dries out, they will be harder to peel. Lychee will keep a few weeks in the refrigerator.

To prolong the season, you can freeze lychee whole and unpeeled. But eat them partially frozen since the fruit gets a little soggy when it thaws.

Enjoy this year’s bountiful season!

———

Hawaii food writer Joan Namkoong offers a weekly tidbit on fresh seasonal products, many of them locally grown.