Daily Dish the Nugget Markets blog
Plum Paradise
The world of plums is an expansive one indeed—and don’t even get us started on their hybrid stone fruit offshoots. Actually, do! Here’s a starter guide to the prolific plum.
The world of plums is an expansive one indeed—and don’t even get us started on their hybrid stone fruit offshoots. Actually, do! Here’s a starter guide to the prolific plum:
Red Plum: These plums sport a scarlet-purple hue, and the soft, dense flesh can follow suit, or go rogue and be yellow! Sweet with mildly sour overtones, they’re great for baking and eating raw in late summer to early fall.
Black Plum: Cut into one of these midnight-hued marvels to find soft, dark red, purple, or yellow flesh and take a bite to enjoy their sweet-tart flavor. They’re delightful in desserts all through summer into early fall.
Yellow Plum: These small, yellow-all-over stone fruits bring major sunny vibes and sweet, rich flavor, typically available mid- to late summer. Great for eating, baking, salads, sauces, and chutneys!
Lemon Plum: A variety of yellow plum, these early-season, teardrop-shaped tantalizers start out a lovely lemon hue, blushing into a reddish magenta as they ripen. They can be used like yellow plums and are firm and pleasantly sweet with notes of tangerine.
Italian Prune Plum: These egg-shaped fruits are firm with honey-hued flesh. Super sweet when ripe with a whisper of citrus, they’re amazing dried or turned into tarts, jams, or compotes. Find them late summer to early fall.
Pluot: A pluot is part plum and part apricot—a hybrid of the two—but it leans more on the plum side. Reddish on the inside and outside, they taste refreshingly sweet with a tiny bit of tartness, less so than a plum. Enjoy them mid- to late summer.
Verry Cherry Plum: If you’re on the prowl for a unique stone fruit hybrid, try these little delights on for size! A cross between a plum and a cherry, these mid-summer marvels are crunchy and tart, with a cherry-like sweetness.
Remember, some of these plums have a very fleeting season, so drop by our Produce Department to see which sensational stone fruits are available that week. Want to keep the plum yum going? Try making them into Refrigerator Jam!
Selection may vary by store and season.
Article originally published in July of 2025 and updated in July of 2026.
