Dates are sold soft and fresh, and they are also sold drier. Sayer dates, from Iran’s Khuzestan province and also traded as Stamaran, are a good example: amber-brown, semi-dry and easy to handle. Fresh dates have their place, but this piece is about dry dates.
Two well-known names show how wide the range is. Deglet Noor, from Tunisia and Algeria, is golden, translucent and semi-dry, and when it is sold on the stem in Malaysia it is called kurma tangkai. Medjool, which originated in Morocco, sits at the other end: large, very soft and rich, with a caramel taste.
The firm, chewy, almost candy-like bite is a big part of a drier date’s appeal. Eaten as a snack or used to sweeten a dish, they bring a lot to a recipe. Chopped, they also work in breads and desserts.
What you plan to cook should decide which dried dates you buy. They blend into a morning smoothie, and stuffed with nuts or cheese they make a good plate to put out for guests, or for yourself. For extra sweetness, chop them into chicken or lamb dishes.
Choosing between dry and soft dates
For chopping into a recipe, a semi-dry date is the easier choice. Dates like Sayer suit recipes where you want pieces rather than paste. Piarom, from Hormozgan in Iran, is another semi-dry date, dark and thin-skinned.
Soft dates behave differently. Mazafati from Bam, in Iran’s Kerman province, is dark, very soft and high in moisture, and it needs refrigeration. Ajwa from Madinah is small, near-black and soft. These are better eaten as they are, or mashed into a filling.
Rutab, tamr and the harvest
Traders use two words for ripeness. Rutab (or rotab) is the soft, fresh-ripe stage. Tamr (or tamar) is the fully ripe, drier stage.
Gulf and Middle-East dates are mostly harvested from late summer to autumn, roughly August to November, and new-season stock reaches Malaysia some weeks later. Soft varieties are a special case. Many are cold-chained, so fresh dates such as rotab Mazafati are on sale all year.
What to check when you buy
Grades such as A, AA, AAA or Jumbo are each importer’s own size sorting, not an international standard, so compare the variety and the price per kilo rather than the label alone.
Buy a small pack of two varieties and taste them side by side if you are new to dried dates.
One semi-dry date and one soft date are enough to show you which texture you like before you commit to a bigger box.
Every variety mentioned here is listed in the Green Diamond shop. Store semi-dry dates like Sayer in an airtight container away from heat, and keep soft dates like Mazafati in the fridge.