Posted on 01/28/2020 2:28:49 PM PST by nickcarraway
If you’ve never heard of jackfruit, keep your eyes open: You’ll start noticing it everywhere.
Jackfruit is a very large tropical fruit often used as a meat substitute. It packs some nutritional wallop, and the fact that you can cook, chunk or shred it like chicken or pork makes it a go-to main ingredient in many vegetarian and vegan dishes.
Its flavor is neutral, and it takes to all kinds of seasonings.
Jackfruit is native to India, and also grows in Southeast Asia, Mexico, the Caribbean and South America. It ranges from 15 pounds to a whopping 70.
For cooking, freshly picked, non-ripe jackfruit generally is used. Once ripe, jackfruit can be used in sweeter dessert preparations.
It's available whole or sliced into more manageable pieces. Unripe, it's green and unyielding; as it ripens, it softens, turns yellow, gets some brown spots and starts to smell fruity.
It's also sold canned, sometimes in brine or syrup, and you can find various types in specialty and Asian food stores and, increasingly, traditional supermarkets.
Now, with many people looking for plant-based alternatives to meat, jackfruit's trajectory is up, up, up.
Robert Schueller, head of marketing at Melissa's Produce, a specialty produce company, has noted that upward trend for several years.
"It was about five years ago that the fruit started to really take off," he says. "Vegetarians and vegans found out how this fruit could be used as a 'meat substitute" for pulled pork sandwiches and as a taco meat."
As word spread in the U.S. about jackfruit's versatility, Schueller says, Melissa's went from selling a few cases a week to thousands of cases a week. Melissa's also offers plastic containers of jackfruit pods containing just one or two servings.
Jackfruit also is popping up on menus across the country, at vegan and vegetarian restaurants, yes, but also in dishes at more mainstream establishments. Tomatillo, a Mexican restaurant in Dobbs Ferry, New York, has a quesadilla and taco made with jackfruit nestled in alongside other meaty and vegetarian offerings. In Chicago, Alulu Brewpub serves up Vegan Sicilian Jackfruit Flatbread on a menu alongside in-house cured pork belly.
Angela Means, owner of the vegan Jackfruit Café in Los Angeles, says people are turning to a vegan diet for many reasons, including environmental, health and animal-rights concerns.
"We eat meat because of the texture and the spices. Jackfruit is a great substitute," Means says. "It's one of the best choices for us because we can mimic meat, Jackfruit grows in abundance, and it has potassium, fiber, magnesium, lots of nutrients. We put it in tacos, and we make sandwiches, like a barbecue pulled 'pork.'"
Jackfruit Café also serves a "fish patty" made of jackfruit combined with seaweed.
"You wouldn’t miss anything — we could give you our taco and you wouldn't even know it's vegan," Means says.
Jackfruit Café tries to educate people in its community about jackfruit and alternatives to a meat-eating diet, she says, predicting, "in seven to 10 years, jackfruit will be as popular as beef."
1.72 g protein per 100g...no substitute.
Drop dead
Drop dead
Can’t debate without being snotty I see. That’s a real strong comeback... If you’re a weasel or a troll.
We need you kind here like we need a bunion.
Let’s review here, as I’m in a combative mood this evening.
I write a short item to inform FReepers of an amusing and informative You Tube culinary channel that they might enjoy.
You jump over my modest effort with a know-it-all comment about British food being bad, without exception. I respond with the observation that you can find good and bad cooking on both sides of the Atlantic.
I take it you’ve never watched Keef Williamson’s videos, enjoyed his droll humor, or observed the excellent results he gets in his home kitchen.
Yet you feel compelled to write a nasty comment about all British food being awful — even after I noted specifically that Keef’s culinary tastes are eclectic, including the use of jackfruit in a recent video.
You claim special knowledge coming from a “restaurant family.”
Are you yourself a chef?
All I claim to be is a middle-aged guy who likes hearty, unpretentious American food.
Your comment about “comfort food” is completely off base. I’ve had good meatloaf and bad meatloaf. Both fall under the “comfort food” category, I suppose. And I guess there are also food snobs who despise simple dishes simply because they’re simple.
I could make some comments about the awfulness of “cheffy” type food as served in overpriced restaurants. Some of these presentations are more like flower arranging than fine dining.
Give me a good American pot roast and vegetables any day of the week.
So, who’s the troll or weasel now? I write a simple, informative post, and you jump all over me.
I hope your next restaurant meal gives you food poisoning .... really bad.
Comfort food to a well rounded chef can also be considered slop. So easy a caveman can do it. Seriously, meatloaf and potatoes? You illustrate my point precisely.
Even high end Brit food comes off to me as unimaginative and bland. Sorry it so offends you that someone on a forum has a different take or perspective. Nothing personal really.
And yes, I do have a lifetimes worth of chef level culinary skills and experience, even though I didn't choose to go into that line of work.
I dont know why some places do that, they should know better. I dont eat it green because its disgusting. I do buy it ripe from a local store. The owner usually cuts it down to 4 large wedges. One quarter wedge is still enough for a good size family as long as its just fruit and not ta seasonal primary source of sustenance like it might be to some poor folks in Asia. Imagine eating a big chunk of firm onion that tastes like Juicy Fruit gum.
OK, so you’re a food snob.
In my experience, much high cuisine is pretentious, overpriced, and under-portioned. A lot of these restaurants, in the old cliché, sell the sizzle as much as the steak.
Even simple dishes often demand a degree of skill and experience, especially in the home kitchen. Not all of us can be culinary professionals, but I would never disparage a quality home-cooked meal. The good amateur cooks I’ve known over 62 years are not “cavemen.”
It’s not that often I’ve encountered a perfectly made-from-scratch Southern biscuit, so light it practically floats off the plate, ready for ham, jam, honey, or whatever you want to put on it.
I appreciate simple, hearty American food, with quality ingredients, prepared the old-fashioned way ... but I suppose that’s only fit for “cavemen.”
>
People stay home for comfort food unless they go to the local diner or something and that’s fine. When they go out they expect something a little more for their money.
That’s why a chef can clear 100k a yr at some places and a cook at a diner is usually making minimum wage. Your points are well taken and I get your perspective, I really do. You don’t get my points or perspective at all though I think.
Remember, this all started because I stated that Brit food is drek, and I stand by that. Good products poorly done make a failure of a plate.
BTW, Irish food is crappy too and I’m Irish.
“Its flavor is neutral”
sort of like spackling compound ...
“But does it taste like chicken?”
it probably would if you added artificial chicken flavor to it ...
But what about Stilton cheese?
My wife is also just eating meat & drinking water. She healed her osteoarthritis in her shoulders eating this way.
562 days without eating sugar, plants & carbs & I still experience:
Zero constipation
Zero headaches
Zero joint pain
Zero bloating
Zero brain fog
Flawless digestion
Pain-free elimination
Happiness
Joy
Works for me!
Really? I find that not dying of heart disease or cancer is actually a pretty good one.
Correlation is not causation - least of all correlation uncorrected for confounding factors.
I guess I’m just ahead of the curve. I’ve been eating a jackfruit substitute most of my life.
It’s called “beef.”
not the canned fruity kind
Those are durian.
They smell horrible but they have a delicate sweetness that some people find very delicious.
How many carbs?
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