Jacked up on jackfruit
I’m usually a pretty adventurous eater but when some boxes of vacuumpacked jackfruit in various flavors landedon my desk, I was skeptical.
Yuck, I thought. That looks like tuna fish. But maybe my son Jack would eat it, I reasoned, as he is always on the prowl for gluten-free dishes.
Nope. Last time I looked in his refrigerator, the package of “sweet and smokey” flavored jackfruit was still languishing on a shelf, behind a halfeaten carton of Chinese food. “It’s too weird,” he told me. Jackfruit has been turning up on more than a few local menus, and not just at vegan eateries such as Onion Maiden but also national restaurants such as Bahama Breeze, where it’s paired with corn and black bean salsa as a filling for tacos. As someone who’s supposed to keep up on all the latest food trends, I figured I’d have to take the plunge. Here’s what I found.
For the uninitiated, jackfruit brings to mind monkey balls (also known as Osage orange or hedge apples) or maybe just alien brains, with its spiky green shell. You can buy it fresh, canned, in refrigerated pouches and dried into strips or chips.
The largest tree-borne fruit in the world, jackfruit can grow up to 80 pounds or more, but you’re more likely to find specimens weighing much less (think watermelon-sized) in specialty grocery stores such as Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and Market District. Common in South and Southeast Asian cuisines, it’s also available in Asian and Indianmarkets.
Cutting a fresh jackfruit isn’t easy — it has a thick skin that brings to mind a rhino hind and a sticky sap that will gunk up your knife and fingers — making it one of the most intimidating fruits. It’s also fairly expensive. At Whole Foods, where the average jackfruit weighs in at about 15 to 20 pounds, it runs $3.99 a pound or $60 to $80. (Although you can buy a cut for $5.)
The fleshy blubs of fruit inside the fibrous innards hold round, chestnutlike seeds that can be roasted or boiled. The fruit itself, which has a strong, musky fragrance, can be eaten out of hand, blended into a smoothie, baked into desserts, mixed with shaved ice or dehydrated into a munchable snack.
“Disgusting,” said my husband after googling it. “If you were on an island, and there was jackfruit, and there was anything else to eat — anything — you would not eat jackfruit.”
Well, maybe. My editor, who grew up in India where the fruit is thought to have originated, gets all starry-eyed when I asked her about the pods in the tropical fruit.
“It slithers down your throat,” she says. “But it’s a delicious slithering because it’s so sweet and smooth. It’s one of my favorite fruits.”
But what if you don’t want to go to the trouble or expense of a fresh jackfruit? The much-cheaper canned or packaged varieties are an easy way to dive in and test the waters.
Said to be the inspiration for Juicy Fruit gum, a fresh ripe fruit tastes like a cross between pineapples and bananas. Ready-to-eat varieties, conversely, are made from “young” jackfruit, or those harvested before they’re fully ripened. So it’s less sweet, and has a completely different texture.
When cooked and broken apart, the texture is similar to pulled pork or shredded chicken. Which makes it popular with vegans and vegetarians who seek a meaty mouthfeel but find other plant-based proteins such as tofu and seitan unsatisfying.
Another plus is its neutral taste.
Like tofu, it takes on the flavor of whatever it’s cooked in. “The longer it simmers, the more the flavor and texture develop,” says Daniel Staackmann, whose Chicago company Upton’s Naturals launched the first seasoned and ready-to-eat jackfruit in the United States.
Mr. Staackmann first tasted jackfruit in 2010 at a Nepalese restaurant in Madison, Wis., in a somewhat traditional curry. Intrigued, he started doing research and learned that people also were using the fruit in barbecue and tacos. But at the time, you could only find it in cans at Asian markets, with tons of added sodium and preservatives. So he set out to create a clean product that would be ready to go right off the shelf. Introduced in 2015, Upton’s Naturals jackfruit is now available in a halfdozen flavors, including sriracha, Thai curry, chili lime and its undoctored “original.” It is harvested, seasoned and packaged in Thailand, where it is grown. It costs $4.99 at Whole Foods. “Fresh is expensive and difficult, and you can’t make a sandwich out of it,” he says. Unlike canned jackfruit, which has to be cooked for acom/calendar. while before serving, Upton’s varieties are retort packaged (in a process similar to canning) into a finished product. It took me only about 20 minutes to turn unflavored jackfruit into a spicy-sweet barbecue sandwich.
Jackfruit has been eaten as a meat alternative for thousands of years, and so Mr. Staackmann hopes that products such as his will help launch the fruit into the mainstream.