Jackfruit the plant-based meat of choice
Singapore start-up teams up with Hong Kong chefs to promote products
Karana, a Singapore-based food start-up, is feeding the increasing demand for plant-based proteins with a product that uses the tropical jackfruit.
It has partnered with two of Hong Kong’s best known chefs to introduce its brand to city diners; it expects to have products available for Hong Kong home cooks by the end of the year.
Karana uses only jackfruit, oil, salt and natural flavourings to make its whole plant meat shreds and mince. It sources jackfruit in Sri Lanka, where they are partly processed before final processing in Singapore.
“Most of the plant-based products out there are made using heavily processed commodity crops like pea, soy and wheat, and instead we are turning to the biodiversity that exists in nature,” co-founder Blair Crichton, 35, says. “Currently, we only consume something like 300 out of 300,000 edible plant species, and 12 crops make up 75 per cent of what we eat, so there’s this huge untapped resource in nature.”
Retail sales of plant-based meats are worth US$7 billion and growing by double digits every year.
According to a Reuters report, Impossible Foods, a major producer of plant-based meats, is in discussions about an initial public offering in the next 12 months that could be worth US$10 billion; its rival Beyond Meat was publicly listed in 2019. OmniPork Luncheons from another company, Green Monday, have been available in McDonald’s and McCafe outlets in Hong Kong and Macau since October 2020, and its microwaveable meals can be found in 7-Eleven convenience stores.
Mando-pop star Wang Leehom is a Green Monday investor, and promotes the plant-based food brand alongside fellow ambassadors James Cameron, the Hollywood director, and musician Paul McCartney’s daughter, Mary McCartney.
Crichton and Karana cofounder Dan Riegler chose to focus on jackfruit because of its taste and its sustainability. Jackfruit trees are usually grown to provide shade for tea and spice plants, and their fruit remains underused.
“It’s actually the highest yielding tree fruit in the world, so there’s an abundance of it,” Crichton says. “It’s grown naturally and does not need pesticides. Currently, 60 per cent of the world’s jackfruit crop goes to waste – there’s a lot of it but not enough demand, so we’re trying to address that issue and take some of that, and give some income streams to small farmers we work with and promote biodiversity.”
Karana harvests the jackfruit before they ripen. Everything inside is used once the outer layer is removed, even the soft seeds and fibrous interior – which has the texture of pulled pork. Karana’s products work as filling in bao (steamed buns), in stir-fries or minced in dumplings.
Karana’s products are versatile and easy for home cooks and chefs to use. For the Singapore launch, they were used with mushrooms in potstickers at fusion restaurant Butcher Boy, in a sloppy joe at bar Jomo, and in a jackfruit rillette at French restaurant Atout.
In Hong Kong, chef Shane Osborn of Arcane used Karana jackfruit in mapo tofu on its Earth Day menu in April, while Manav Tuli, of Indian restaurant Chaat in the Rosewood hotel in Tsim Sha
Tsui, will use Karana’s jackfruit instead of lamb in his samosas. Karana’s products will also feature in dishes at Sip Song by Maximal Concepts; Emerald in Central; all Beef & Liberty outlets; all Elephant Grounds outlets; Cantonese restaurant Cheung Kung Koon in Causeway Bay; and Deliveroo’s takeaway kitchen Hot N’ Meen.
Crichton became a vegan in 2016 after watching Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret, a 2014 documentary. He left a career at HSBC to go to business school in the United States, and promised himself that he would work on climate change after graduation. While studying, he worked for Impossible Foods in strategy and business development, and on its expansion into Asia.
“It is successful and they have a fantastic product, but in the back of my mind I was thinking [that] in Asia we eat pork and chicken; really, there is a lot of opportunity to do something more localised,” he says.
In 2018, Crichton met Riegler at a conference in the US. Riegler had already started Karana and was looking for a co-founder for the start-up.
The word karana comes from Sanskrit, the primary sacred language of Hinduism.
“In Bali, it is used in a phrase, ‘to achieve balance between man and nature’, and in Hindi it means ‘to take action or to do’,” Crichton says.
“Both tie really nicely with what we are about, which is about encouraging people to take action about better food choices to respect nature and to achieve a better balance with nature.”