Episode 18

full
Published on:

10th Nov 2026

Brian Frange Ranks Your Apples (Sorry, Fuji)

Episode Description

Why does every apple you ate as a kid taste like "coffee grounds in a leather glove"? With Thanksgiving pies around the corner, George Duran sits down with comedian Brian Frange, the self-proclaimed Apple enthusiast behind Apple Rankings, the site that scores apples from "Immaculate" all the way down to "Horse Food" and "Apple Hell."

Brian explains how a single bite of a SweeTango ruined every Red Delicious for him, why Honeycrisp is the queen mother of modern apples, how a bad name can sink a perfectly decent apple, and why he re-ranks everything each season (and gets death threats when a stored-over-winter apple lets someone down). Then the mind-bender: plant an apple seed and you get a brand-new variety. Which means every Honeycrisp you've ever eaten came from the same original tree, grafted over and over again.

Plus: how to store apples (fridge, always), the winter "keepers," the farmer who nearly lost the Red Delicious by forgetting to put his address on a contest entry, why Brian wants the American Fuji gone, whether apple picking has turned into a rip-off, and his brick-and-mortar rule for the perfect Thanksgiving apple pie.

This is a Side Dish: a short, one-on-one conversation with someone who really knows their food. For the full Always Hangry experience, with co-hosts, games and rants, check out our regular episodes.

Key Takeaways

  • It started as a grievance. Raised on Red Delicious, Brian thought apples came in two kinds, red and green, until a SweeTango changed everything.
  • Honeycrisp changed the game. Released by the University of Minnesota in 1991, it's a famously finicky tree to grow, and it's a parent of many of today's star apples: SweeTango, Cosmic Crisp, Lucy Glo, Hunnyz and more.
  • Red Delicious was bred for looks. Generations of selecting for color bred the flavor out. Its ancestor, the Hawkeye, still exists, and Brian says it tastes better.
  • A name can sink an apple. Brian scores Hunnyz a 58 ("barely worth it") and says it would be in the 70s with a better name.
  • Rankings change every season. Rainfall, sunlight, storage, scale and shipping distance all change what reaches the store. A SweeTango in season and one stored over winter are different apples.
  • Organic doesn't move the needle (usually). Brian hasn't found a consistent taste difference, though this year's organic Opals are his comeback apple of the year.
  • Apples belong in the fridge. In a plastic bag poked with holes, in the crisper drawer at the lowest humidity setting. Apples give off ethylene, so put them next to green bananas to speed ripening.
  • "Keepers" get you through winter. Varieties like GoldRush, EverCrisp, Winesap and Arkansas Black store for months. Arkansas Black is so hard off the tree that it needs months in the fridge to become edible, and it still sits in Brian's "Apple Hell."
  • Every seed is a new apple. Apples are extreme heterozygotes: a Honeycrisp seed won't grow a Honeycrisp, and most seedlings produce sour, crabapple-like fruit.
  • Every Honeycrisp is the same tree. The only way to reproduce a variety is grafting, so every tree of a variety is a clone of the original. You can even graft several varieties onto one tree.
  • Apples are big marketing now. New varieties are bred, numbered, tested and focus-grouped; Cosmic Crisp launched with a roughly $10 million marketing campaign. The days of a backyard find becoming a hit are over.
  • Red Delicious won a contest — twice. Iowa farmer Jesse Hiatt's Hawkeye won the Stark Bro's contest, but his contact info was lost; he sent it in again the next year and won again.
  • Brian's Fuji grudge. American Fujis, he says, are a mealy shadow of the Japanese original, with skin thick enough for a 1920s football helmet.
  • Apple picking is pricier for a reason. George thinks orchards squeeze visitors; Brian argues farming apples has never been harder or more expensive.
  • The Thanksgiving pie rule: brick and mortar. Use more than one apple. A firm "brick" (Northern Spy — "spies for pies" — or Granny Smith or Golden Delicious) plus a softer "mortar" that melts down (SweeTango, Pink Lady). Brian's pie this year: Golden Delicious and Pink Lady.
  • Skip the jar. Brian wouldn't eat canned apple pie filling for less than $70 million.

People & Companies Mentioned

  • George Duran — Host, Always Hangry; chef and TV personality
  • Brian Frange — Comedian, TV writer and animator from New York (Long Island); creator of Apple Rankings (Tumblr 2016, its own site since 2021), where he goes by "The Appleist"
  • Apple Rankings — applerankings.com; apples scored 1–100 in tiers from "Immaculate" to "Apple Hell"
  • University of Minnesota — Released Honeycrisp (1991) and SweeTango
  • Washington State University / Proprietary Variety Management — Cosmic Crisp and its ~$10 million launch campaign
  • Gee Whiz (Auvil Fruit Company) — Producer of Hunnyz (CrimsonCrisp × Honeycrisp)
  • Stark Bro's Nurseries — Ran the 1893–94 contest that turned Jesse Hiatt's Hawkeye into the Red Delicious
  • Jesse Hiatt — Iowa farmer who found the Hawkeye
  • Johnny Appleseed — Seed planter, cited by Brian
  • Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, Sam's Club — Where Brian found SweeTango and George bought Lucy Glo and SweeTango
  • Sara Lee — Brian says it used Northern Spy for its pies
  • Williams Sonoma — Sells jarred apple pie filling, per George
  • Apple varieties mentioned: Red Delicious, Hawkeye, Honeycrisp, SweeTango, Cosmic Crisp, SugarBee, Lucy Glo, Ludacrisp, Hunnyz, Opal, Fuji, Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, Pink Lady, Northern Spy, GoldRush, EverCrisp, Winesap, Arkansas Black, McIntosh, Gala, Knobbed Russet, Ashmead's Kernel, Sheep's Nose

Links

Guest

Always Hangry

Transcript
George Duran:

So are you saying the apples are as American as apple pie?

Brian Frange:

Apples are as American as apple pie.

That is so true.

George Duran:

Welcome to the Always Hangry podcast, where we break down the way we eat.

The good, the bad, the completely ridiculous.

I'm your host, George Duran.

Today we've got a special bonus episode for you.

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, apples are about to take center stage in pies, crisps, and all sorts of holiday treats.

But with thousands of varieties out there, which ones are actually worth biting into and which ones deserve to be tossed in the compost bin?

Our guest today is comedian and apple enthusiast Brian Frange, the man behind Applerankings.com who's made it his mission to taste rate and brutally judge just about every apple out there.

Brian, welcome to the show.

Brian Frange:

Wow.

Thank you.

That might have been the best intro I've ever gotten.

That.

That was so well done.

George Duran:

Apples just inspire me.

You won't see that level of effort for any other fruit.

Brian Frange:

We have that in common.

George Duran:

Yes, we do.

Tell me how this obsession started.

Brian Frange:

Yeah, well, I mean, as most things in my life, it began as a grievance because I had been eating, you know, the typical apple fare for most of my life.

Growing up as a child, the teachers and parents of my life would force red Delicious apples down my throat, regardless of what.

Whether I wanted them or not.

And I thought ever since I was a young boy that there were two types of apples, red and green, which now I know is an affront to God's bounty.

still, even up into the early:

But then in:

And when I bit into that apple, my whole world changed because I was like, what I had been eating was basically not even the same fruit as this.

This is such a good apple that the other apples I've been fed shouldn't even be called apples.

And so I got pretty upset.

I went to a cave of despair where I questioned all of my life's choices for about 16 years.

And when I emerged covered in dirt and grass and dung, I decided I was never going to allow this to happen to anyone on earth again.

I am going to go around and find and rank every single apple and compile it into a public resource so that the public can never suffer the indignity of choking down coffee grounds in a leather glove.

George Duran:

Oh, my gosh.

I'm telling you, that is passion to its maximum.

Let's.

Let's step back a little bit here and let's talk about the honeycrisp, because it sounds like that's kind of a revolution where it all happened.

And something like sweet tango, it's derived from the honeycrisp.

So where did it come from?

Why is it so expensive?

And how easy was it to kind of derive all these other new varieties from it?

Brian Frange:

It's very interesting.

The honeycrisp was the, you know, the golden goose of farmers for about 20 years now, despite being a finicky diva, that's nearly impossible to grow.

The one good thing you can say about the red delicious, which is, you know, vomitus fill.

It's not quite vomitus filth.

It's.

It's horse food.

It's in my horse food tier.

But the one good thing you could say about the red delicious is that they're pretty easy to grow.

And they're also a very good looking apple.

Which was the downfall of the red delicious is they were bred for looks and not taste.

And over the course of many generations of red delicious growing there, the.

The taste was selectively bred out of them.

And that's what we're left with, is a beautiful looking hunk of trash.

The original red delicious was called the hawkeye apple.

And people still grow in very select locations in the midwest a lot.

The hawkeye apple is actually the original red delicious apple.

George Duran:

What?

Brian Frange:

Yes.

And if you go find the Hawkeye, it will be very similar to red delicious, but might just taste a little better.

And if you go.

So if you want to go seek out the red delicious from your youth that you so fondly remember, you need to seek out the hawkeye.

George Duran:

Okay, I'm not going to do that because I don't care about the red delicious anymore.

How much of the success of a variety of apple is marketing.

And the name,.

Brian Frange:

The name's not everything, but the name can really sink an apple.

And one of the apple, the worst named apple that I've ever come across, which is available in supermarkets nationwide, is the honey's apple.

Have you ever had a honeys?

George Duran:

How do you spell honeys?

Brian Frange:

Yeah, that's the question.

Because even the company that made this apple doesn't really know how to spell it.

The honey's apple is spelled H U N backwards N Y, capital Z.

So they shove a like a Pooh bear N and then a closing uppercase Z.

It's just repugnant.

This is actually a decent apple.

I ha.

It.

Currently it has a 58 out of 100, which is in the barely worth it category, but it could be up in the 70s if not for the name.

The name is just too humiliating.

George Duran:

That's crazy.

You know, and.

And there are a lot of incredibly named apples.

Cosmic Crisp, Sugar Bee, Lucy Glow.

Ludicrisp. Loving all those.

I mean, that's like full on 100% marketing.

And if the apple tastes good, it's bound to be a perfect apple.

Brian Frange:

Yeah.

George Duran:

And am I right to think that if they are derived from honeycrisp, you're going to succeed either way?

Brian Frange:

I mean, not necessarily.

There are some bad honeycrisp lineage apples out there, but the honeycrisp is truly the queen mother of apples.

George Duran:

Yeah.

Brian Frange:

More than half of the modern varieties of apples that you find today in supermarkets are part honeycrisp.

All those apples you just named the Sugar Bee, the Cosmic Crisp, the Sweet Tango, they're all part honeycrisp.

George Duran:

Got it.

I just came from Trader Joe's and I bought a bag of Lucy Glows and tell people what this is and what happens when you cut into it.

Brian Frange:

Lucy Glow is one of my top apples.

It is.

I think currently it's number three.

George Duran:

Wait, do they change order year by year?

Like, are you changing or do they stay where they are in the ranking?

Brian Frange:

I reevaluate my apples every year because Apple's quality changes season to season based on a lot of different factors.

The amount of rainfall, the amount of sunlight in the region, how they've been stored.

Have they decided to upscale the production of them?

Are they shipping them farther distances?

All these things factor in to the apple that makes it to the consumer.

And so I try to evaluate what most consumers will get when they go to the grocery store, because a lot of people get very upset by my Apple reviews, especially if I mislead them and they will curse my name and send me death threats.

And that's all part of the job of being an apple ranker.

It's, you know, it's just comes with the risk.

George Duran:

No, you're.

You gotta be joking me.

Brian Frange:

I am not joking.

Look at the comment section on Apple rankings dot com.

That's why when I rank them, I try to rank them as fresh as possible, as closest to where they are grown as possible.

I want to get the best candidate of apple to represent the variety as possible.

And a lot of people, when they get a sweet Tango in November or a sweet Tango that's been stored over the winter, they get a mealy disgrace that tastes like toilet water and they curse my name.

They come after me and they.

They try to threaten my family and the future generations of my family.

George Duran:

I.

Well, I just bought a bag of sweet Tangos from Sam's club today.

I haven't opened it yet, so I'll let you know if.

If it's past its prime or anything like that.

Brian Frange:

The organic sweet Tangos were good this year.

And let me tell you this.

The organic opals are absolutely phenomenal this year.

I mean, that I used to rank the opal a little bit higher.

I might raise the rank of the opal because I lowered the ranking because there was a couple of seasons where it just did not live up to the hype.

This year, the opal apple, it might be the comeback apple of the year.

George Duran:

The opal is the yellow one, is that right?

Brian Frange:

Yes.

Yellow.

A tasty butt because it looks like a butt.

George Duran:

Is there really truly a difference in your opinion between organic and non organic, flavor wise and also pesticide wise?

Brian Frange:

There are some people who claim that they can taste the chemical like aftertaste of a pesticide on an apple.

I've never come across that, and I would say up until this season, I have found no discernible difference in quality between an organic apple and an inorganic apple.

Sometimes the organic apples are amazing, sometimes the inorganic apples are amazing.

But that doesn't have any.

That doesn't factor into my apple rankings.

George Duran:

What is the best way to preserve apples at home?

When you buy it.

When you buy a bunch of them.

Brian Frange:

Yeah.

So this should not be up for debate.

There are a lot of people who are under the misguided perception that apples ought to be left on the counter to fester in the heat like some kind of pear.

It is.

An apple is a refrigerated fruit.

They are meant to be cold.

They stay longer in the refrigerator, and they stay fresher in the refrigerator.

I don't want to go crazy and treat each apple like it's a newborn baby in the icu.

But you should take each a group of apples, put them in a plastic bag, poke that bag with holes so that it can breathe, and then place it in your crisper drawer at the lowest humidity setting.

A fun fact is, if you have a batch of green bananas and you want to eat your bananas tomorrow, just put some apples next to those bananas because the apples produce a gas that forces other fruits around it to ripen.

If you put your apples next to potatoes, those potatoes are going to sprout within days.

George Duran:

Good to know.

All right, we're going to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere.

When we come back, we've still got plenty more to talk about with Brian Frange right after this.

All right, we're back with Brian Frange of Applerankings.com where are apples coming from in the middle of winter here in New York or even in California?

California.

Where are we growing them outside of the New England area?

Brian Frange:

The apples that you would get in the grocery store in the wintertime, there are a couple of ways that that happens.

Either one, you have a good grocery store and they offer you winter long season apples.

There are some apples that are known as keepers and that means that they stay fresh for sometimes upwards of eight months.

Some standard keepers are the Gold rush apple, the ever crisp apple, the wine SAP apple.

Some of these apples are good, some of these apples are bad, but all of these apples stay fresh for a really long time.

The Arkansas Black, which is my, one of my lowest rank apples, it's an apple hell, stays fresh for about eight months.

In fact, if you buy an Arkansas Black that just came from an orchard, like if you get one now from the orchard and in the fall it'll be so hard it'll be nearly impossible to bite into.

You'll break your teeth off and have to go to the dentist.

But if you put the apple in your refrigerator, you might be able to have an edible fruit eight months from now.

George Duran:

What?

I've never heard of the Arkansas Black apple ever.

Brian Frange:

Yes, a teeth shattering oddity from Arkansas.

It's not even really black, it's more like dark red.

They should call it the Arkansas Dark red.

George Duran:

A lot of these apples are again grafted and derived from other apples.

Is there something dangerous about this?

Are we going to labs and doing this or it's just more cross breeding?

Brian Frange:

No, there's nothing dangerous about grafting at all.

The one danger.

Well, there is one danger.

The one danger about grafting is that if you each grafted apple tree is the exact same genetic makeup of every other grafted apple tree of the same variety.

That's how you get the same variety of apple.

What that means is if you are grafting and planting too much of the same variety of apple, you lose the biodiversity required to survive pestilence and hot summers and, you know, bugs and all the, all the things that.

And disease.

All the things that destroy apples.

George Duran:

Can you explain to us how breeding works?

How does that happen?

How do they.

How's the grafting?

And the whole process works?

Brian Frange:

Well, apples are known as extreme heterozygotes, which means that every single seed in every single apple will grow a different variety of apple.

You won't.

If you have a honey crisp apple and you want to grow more honeycrisp apples, if you remove a honeycrisp apple seed and plant it, you will not get a honeycrisp tree.

You will get a completely different tree that produces a completely different apple.

George Duran:

Wait, like an apple that's already known or just a whole different.

Brian Frange:

Apple?

That's why there are so many varieties.

George Duran:

How do you.

So you're just telling me that we can just Frankenstein unlimited apples?

Brian Frange:

There's.

Yeah, well, there's infinite.

There is an infinite number.

That's why apples are the most amazing fruit.

It's because you can.

There are tens of thousands of varieties that are known that are named.

And then there are probably hundreds of thousands of extinct apple varieties or just one random tree in a Wisconsin backyard that has no name, that have existed throughout the course of human history.

Apples go all the way back to.

There's.

There's reported of named apples going all the way back to ancient Greece.

And those have been planted from the ancient apple forests of Kazakhstan, where the modern apple was born.

And so over the course of time, there have probably been hundreds of thousands, if not more apple varieties that exist.

And it's because every single seed of every single apple produces a new variety.

So the question that always follows that is, well, then how do you get the same apple?

How do you.

How do you grow more honeycrisp apples?

And that is the most fascinating apple fact of all, which is the only way to do it is through grafting, which is where you take a branch of an existing honeycrisp apple tree and you frankenstein it onto rootstock so that the branch hijacks the roots resources and then grows honeycrisp apples.

George Duran:

That's crazy.

Brian Frange:

Yes.

What that means is a few things.

One, you could take a rootstock and you could attach branches from multiple types of apples, like a honeycrisp, a Fuji, and a Gala.

And then you could have a tree that grows all three types of apples.

George Duran:

Oh, no.

Brian Frange:

Yes.

You don't have to just have a Macintosh tree.

You can have an apple tree with as diverse an array of varieties as an apple pie you bake in the oven.

It all is a matter of grafting early on.

And the branches Will grow.

What?

The branches will grow.

But what that means is this.

That means that every single honeycrisp apple that you've ever eaten comes from the same exact apple.

Honeycrisp tree that was the first ever honeycrisp tree.

All of the apple trees of the same variety are the same exact organism, the same exact living organism as the original tree that produced that apple.

There's literally no other way to reproduce an apple than to take a branch from the original tree and graft it over and over and over again, creating an unbroken chain of life that allows you to share a meal with your ancestors.

George Duran:

Okay, I'm getting chills because this is like.

It starts with one singular.

Somebody found the honeycrisp apple.

Brian Frange:

And.

George Duran:

Said, this is so good that we need to graft it for the rest of our lives.

Brian Frange:

That's exactly how it happens.

George Duran:

And you're telling me that the apple that I have upstairs, the seed can be a gold mine?

Because I have no idea what I'm going to.

What's going to come out of it.

Brian Frange:

That's right.

Now, it takes a lot of dedication because if you plant an apple seed in the ground, it will take about 20 years before it produces a tree that produces fruit.

And there is a 99% chance that the fruit it produces is pure trash.

Oftentimes it'll be a crabapple variety.

It's going to be an unnamed variety, but it'll be similar to a crab apple.

It'll be sour and inedible.

So that's why people like Johnny Appleseed and.

And any modern orchardist will plant tens of thousands of seeds and wait 20 years.

And then when those trees produce fruit, they'll go around and they'll try all of them.

And maybe 1 in 10,000 is a good apple that could make it to market.

And even then, they're sometimes bad.

George Duran:

Are there any other fruits that are like this?

Brian Frange:

I'm only an apple expert.

I can tell you this.

All I know is that pears are terrible.

And there are a lot of varieties of bananas, but not this many.

There are other extreme heterozygotes.

George Duran:

That is crazy.

And somebody suddenly grew out of the 10,000 apples and said, this is amazing.

Let's call this the sugar beet and market it and graft it and grow it forever and ever.

Brian Frange:

Yeah, I mean, well, some of the modern apples that are developed to make it to market, a lot of these names are focus grouped and cross tested for maximum marketability.

The Cosmic Crisp is a perfect example of this.

They spend a Lot of money they put.

Initially, they did a $10 million investment behind the Cosmic Crisp to get more trees planted.

And the fruit of their labor is being realized now as the Cosmic Crisp climbs the rankings of most popular apple in supermarkets in America.

I personally prefer when, you know, when we lived in a time where any old sucker could plant a seed or find a tree in their backyard, pluck that apple, it was pretty good, and they could name it whatever they wanted, and that might be a regional darling for the next 25 years or longer.

That day is dead now.

You could not possibly infiltrate the innards of the marketing machine that is Applelandia.

You need to have a multi million dollar organization.

The Red Delicious is a perfect example.

That apple was just discovered by some guy in Iowa.

And he just said, I think this apple might be good.

At the time, he called it the Hawkeye.

He sent it to the Stark brothers, which is one of the biggest, most historic apple companies in America.

And they were holding a contest for best apple to find an apple that could become their new marketing darling.

And the Red Delicious actually won the contest the first year.

But the guy who sent the apple in forgot to put his, like, address.

George Duran:

Oh, no.

Brian Frange:

So they had no idea where the apple came from.

And they're like, well, this apple's amazing.

We have to find it.

The next year, they put out another open call for apples.

And the farmer from Iowa was so convinced that his apple was amazing, he thought they must have overlooked his apple and I'm gonna send it again.

So he sent it again, and this time with his address.

They tasted it.

It won the apple contest.

And that's how the Red Delicious became a mainstream apple.

Literally.

A guy won a contest that would never happen today.

Never.

All the apples you find today are selected in a Hunger Games esque lottery amongst 10,000 other varieties that are planted in a clean row on an orchard and tested.

They're all given numbers.

If they're good enough, they will eventually be given a name.

George Duran:

Is there a common apple out there in the supermarkets that you wish would just die?

Brian Frange:

Yeah, I would say the Fuji.

George Duran:

Really?

Brian Frange:

The Fuji apples in America are a completely different diminished shadow of an apple compared to the Fujis in Japan.

And I call them the Japanese pop star because everyone gets really mad at me when I say that they're trash.

Just like if you're a fan of a Japanese pop star and we don't understand it, the Fuji apple is trash in America.

It is a mealy, thick skinned disgrace.

To me, the Fuji apple is 95% of the time.

thick enough to be used as a:

George Duran:

Okay, all right, let's, let's take a quick break.

When we come back, we'll find out which apples Bryant actually recommends baking with and why.

Apple picking might just be one of the biggest scans of the fall season.

We'll be right back.

All right, we're back with Brian fringe of Apple rankings dot com.

Do you still go apple picking?

Brian Frange:

Every year I'll go to orchards to find apples that I haven't ranked yet.

And there are so many.

I mean, it's, it's.

This is a fool's errand to try to rank every apple, but I am a fool and I am going to try to do this.

And every year, like, there are, there are orchards three hours from my house that have dozens of apple varieties that I still have not yet ranked because there's so many.

George Duran:

Amazing.

Can we talk about the business model of apple picking?

Because it's kind of pissing me off a little bit, especially here in New England.

Brian Frange:

Yeah, tell me about it.

George Duran:

I don't remember it being this commercial like it was back in the days.

You can walk into an apple orchard here in New England and they will squeeze every single cent out of you for you to go and pick the apples.

And it's not even like a fantastic variety and you have to buy insane amounts that you eventually throw away.

Why are we doing this to ourselves?

Have we just kind of usurped the whole apple picking experience?

Brian Frange:

I mean, it's a sign of our times, really.

The nation has spiraled into a ultra capitalist enterprise that strips us of all dignity.

And the apple orchards are not immune to this desire to increase profit.

I wouldn't be surprised if some of these apples, apple orchards could not survive if not for squeezing the consumer during the apple picking season.

It's not easy being a farmer, especially now, especially with climate change.

Your crops are in danger.

So much more than they were 100 years ago, 50 years ago.

The things that farmers have to do so that a good tasting apple makes it to your table is absurd.

It's absurd.

Spraying special fans, special pesticides, special pruning, they're all these things.

Like, sometimes it's too cold overnight and farmers will have to put up these gigantic, essentially space heaters just to make sure that the apple trees don't frost over.

Not to mention sometimes there's forest fires nearby and sometimes smoke will infest the apples and make the crop, ruin the crop or ruin the soil.

There's so many things.

And so out of all of the places where I wouldn't mind giving extra money to, it would be an apple orchard.

And so.

George Duran:

You're a little.

You're a little biased, I just want to say.

A little bit biased, but go on.

Brian Frange:

We live in a jaded time, and it's where venture capitalists take over and ruin everything, make everything more expensive and squeeze every last dollar out of us, the consumer.

We live in a time of extreme income inequality, and I think that that has trickled down to even the apple orchards that are forced to nickel and dime you in order to get as much money as they can to keep their orchards afloat.

And it's sad, but we are so far past the days of just walking on to, you know, old farmer McClintock's farm and plucking a few apples and walking away.

George Duran:

That makes sense.

Is there a particular apple that is the absolute best for baking?

The number one apple.

And I'm talking about a common apple, not one of these ones that we've never heard of.

Brian Frange:

So Thanksgiving's coming up, and that means you ought to be making an apple pie.

Pumpkin pie is fine.

I like pumpkin pie.

But it's not Thanksgiving unless you also have an apple piece.

Apple is the most American fruit.

Without apples, America probably would not exist in the state it exists today.

Apples kept us alive via cider in the frontier times, and without apples, we have nothing to be thankful for.

So you should make an apple pie.

George Duran:

So are you saying that apples are as American as apple pie?

Brian Frange:

Apples are as American as apple pie.

That is so true.

And there's nothing more American than Thanksgiving.

If you are making an apple piece, there's one rule, and that is you need to use multiple types of apples in your pie.

If you're just using one apple, you are.

It's an affront to the variety that's available to you.

And basically, there are two types of apples you can put in a pie.

There's the brick, and there's the mortar.

There's the structure, and there's what's within the structure.

You need to have a baking apple that can result in solid chunks, and then you need to have the stuff that filters in between those solid chunks.

You don't want to just have an apple pie that's filled with chunks, because then you're biting into a dry and chunky pie.

That's.

That's not the essence of what a pie should be.

You also don't want to have a pure, liquid pie, so you're eating into A biting into like a pie soup or a pot pie.

And there are a lot of options for the chunk fruits and a lot of options for the liquid or the more liquidy fruits that you can get.

If you are in New England, you could probably get a northern spy.

Spies for pies.

Okay.

The Northern Spy apple is an incredible baking apple.

In fact, it was the apple that Sara Lee used to mass produce their pies.

Their apple pies.

But if you can't find a northern spy, I would go after a Golden Delicious or a Granny Smith for your chunk fruit.

It's great to have the sour of a Granny Smith because that's how you get great flavor when baked.

Usually the best baking apples start off sour, but Golden Delicious melts down into a buttery pate that is just aching for cinnamon and sugar.

It is an incredible baking apple.

I would start with the Golden Delicious in between.

You can't go wrong with Sweet Tango.

It melts down into like a apple pudding.

You can't go wrong with the Pink Lady.

This year I am going to be making a Golden Delicious Pink lady apple pie.

That's a great combination.

George Duran:

Is the apple pie the ultimate apple dessert for you?

Brian Frange:

Yeah, I would say so.

George Duran:

I mean, I'll tell you one that will beat it, I think.

And you can disagree.

The tarte tartar tongue.

Brian Frange:

Well, yeah, I mean, look, you say apple, I say apple.

I think.

George Duran:

They're.

Brian Frange:

Very similar.

George Duran:

How much would someone have to pay you to eat canned apples?

Brian Frange:

Canned,.

George Duran:

Like apple pie filling.

Like apple pie filling.

Brian Frange:

70 Million.

I mean, I would need to get paid more than I make in a year, which would be about 70 million.

George Duran:

And I'm seeing like high end stores like Williams Sonoma and such.

They're selling the apple pie filling, you know, in jars, like kind of high end.

You wouldn't touch that, would you?

Brian Frange:

Absolutely not.

That's insane.

It's probably half corn syrup.

So you're not even really eating an apple pie.

You're eating a corn piece.

George Duran:

Brian Frange, will we ever see the day that we'll have the Frange apple?

Brian Frange:

Here's the problem.

I don't know if I will ever.

If I will own land where I can plant a tree and have enough time for that to produce apples in my life.

But that is something I would love to produce.

An actual apple tree.

Good apple or.

It doesn't have to be good.

If I can produce an apple that's uglier than a knobbed russet or an ash means kernel.

Or if I can produce an apple that tastes worse than a sheep nose, I'd be fine with calling that the Frang.

George Duran:

All right, well, we'll leave it at that.

I hope someday we will see the Frange Crisp because I could only imagine it ranking pretty high.

Brian Frange:

On.

George Duran:

Your website.

Brian, thanks so much for being on the show and giving us this incredible insight on apples.

Brian Frange:

My pleasure.

George Duran:

And you can check out Brian Frange's favorite apples at his hilarious reviews and his complete apple rankings@apple rankings.com and follow him on Instagram and TikTok at Brian Frange Frange spelled F R A N G E. https://www.instagram.com/brianfrange/ and https://www.tiktok.com/@brianfrange

That's it for today's show.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe and share it with a fellow foodie.

And don't forget to follow us on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok at always hangry Podcast.

Until next time, I'm George Duran.

Stay hungry.

Show artwork for Always Hangry

About the Podcast

Always Hangry
Chef George Duran calls out the weird, frustrating, and totally ridiculous ways we all behave around food.

Food isn't complicated. People make it complicated.


Always Hangry is a funny, honest, slightly unhinged podcast where chef and TV personality George Duran calls out the weird, frustrating, and totally ridiculous ways we all behave around food.


This is not a recipe show. It's not precious. It's not trying to impress you. It's the kind of conversation you have after a couple of drinks, when somebody finally says the thing everyone else is thinking but nobody wants to say out loud.


Why does one gluten-free guest suddenly change an entire dinner party? Why are the Costco samples always the wrong thing? When did we stop trusting our instincts at a restaurant and start trusting whatever looked good on social media? Every episode grabs the everyday stuff — ordering, shopping, food trends, other people's eating habits — and pulls it apart with humor, honesty, and just enough chef perspective to actually make it land.


Episodes open loose and opinionated: George and a co-host working through rants, food news, real-life scenarios, and arguments that start small and end up somewhere much bigger than they should. The energy comes from the back-and-forth and the disagreements. Nothing is locked in.


And then the show goes deeper. Many episodes turn from the rant into a real conversation with someone who genuinely knows the subject — a chef, a scientist, a farmer, a writer, an insider — the kind of expert who can tell you whether the thing we've all been arguing about is actually true. Same honesty, same humor, just with someone in the room who has the receipts.


Most food content either teaches you something or tries to look perfect. Always Hangry does neither, and somehow does both. It's for anyone who has ever been annoyed ordering at a restaurant, confused by a menu, skeptical of a trend, or stuck in a situation where dinner quietly turned into a social negotiation.


New episodes weekly. Built to be watched, clipped, shared, and argued over.


Always Hangry is what happens when you stop pretending food has to be serious and start admitting it's actually kind of ridiculous.


Watch, subscribe, sign up for the newsletter, and t ell us who George should be arguing with next at https://alwayshangrypodcast.com/">alwayshangrypodcast.com.