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jackfruit what's the deal with this mysterious fruit? Why are all the vegans vegetarians and healthy plant based people eating it? They say it's like meat. How can that be? We're going to talk about all that and more today on this episode.
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You're listening to the smarter Healthy Living podcast where we firmly believe that getting healthy should never feel like torture. We're your host, Jarrod and Anita Roussel were college sweethearts, and health professionals who help you redefine what getting healthy looks like using a whole food plant based lifestyle. It's time to hear from the experts and learn the best tips and tricks that helped others get me on the overwhelm, to create a vibrant life they love. If you're sick and tired of being sick, and tired, you're in the right place. So pull up a virtual chair, grab your matcha latte, and let's get started.
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Like many other people out there, we have grown to love this fruit. It is wonderful.
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It's delicious. not the easiest thing to prepare fresh. We'll talk about that today. But it's amazing because it's like tofu and that it absorbs the flavor of almost anything you cook with it or cook it in. So you can eat it fresh, you can buy canned, it also comes in little sealed packets. Now the friend buy
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it frozen.
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Oh yeah, you can actually we've never tried it frozen, though.
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I haven't tried that.
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But it's it's fresh. When it's fresh. It tastes like a tropical fruit. And you'll see it in the produce section. It's huge. It's kind of oblong, almost like a gigantic
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spiky watermelon.
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It really is, that's a great way to describe it, it's green. And if it's ever ripe, it would turn like a brown, green or brown is that would be way too ripe and the fruit would not taste good. It almost tastes fermented when it gets like that. Sadly to say I have had overripe jackfruit before it's not as good. But really, it should taste fresh, like a tropical fruit sweet. When you buy it fresh and it's colored like a mango, absolutely delicious, you open the thing up, and it has these pods of goodness inside that are just sweet, juicy. And really, it's just nothing else tastes like it, I would say it's kind of along the lines of a mango, papaya, and status acidic as a pineapple.
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But it's still in that same kind of flavor family, if you will.
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But again, they're huge.
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I mean, they can grow up to around 100 pounds, I think on average is around 25 pounds, 10 to 25, something like that. But I remember the first time we saw one, Matthew went running up to it because he recognized it from pictures. We had never at that point bought a whole one. But he grabbed it and picked it up. And it was a huge thing that was probably about four times bigger than his head at the time. And he's holding it and I have this picture of him standing there holding it. And it's hilarious, he wanted me to take a picture and show everybody in our Facebook group what a jackfruit was, but you can cut them and there are a lot of different ways that you can cut them. But the thing is, if you buy a whole one, you need to prepare to freeze it because they're you in freeze at home now you have to cut it at first and freeze the difference on it is a whole there's ton of fruit in it. So the likelihood of you ever eating all that of course you wouldn't eat it before it went bad most likely, unless you had a pain like 20 maybe or so what we would recommend is usually in the supermarkets now a lot of them will have pre cut with their pre cut foods and things like that. So you can find it in a wedge with the pods, the jackfruit pods still inside that wedge and it'll be wrapped in plastic wrap. And then sometimes if they have the whole fruit, but they don't have a wedge already pre cut, you just ask them and a lot of times they'll cut one up for you and put it in that section and you'll get a fresh pre cut one right there and you don't have to deal with cutting it and getting all the sticky it's almost like a sap it's super sticky. The way
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I've heard it described as it's almost like a natural latex in there so it sticks to the knife and the knife doesn't cut through quite as smoothly
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really you want to one of the few times I'd recommend using oils to oil your knife for that because the sap is kind of like a sap is gonna stick all of your knife is going to get all of your hands so you would wear gloves and you would lay down newspaper or something like that to cut it on. Again, if you want to know how to do that you can find videos since we're not on a video platform right now you can find video of that on YouTube.
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There are a lot of great ways to cut it. But again, you can buy pre cut wedge, very simple and you just pull out the pods piece by piece one by one. And inside each pod will actually when you first pull it out it has almost like a harder type layer of skin on it. But once you pulled that off of that little pod, what you're left with is something with the texture like a smooth bell pepper on the outside so you'll know you have all the test skin of that pot off. When it's more like us made bell pepper, then what you do is go ahead and pull this seat out and then the seats can be made some people boileau some people rice those we've never done that before but they say they're very healthy and really good for you.
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Most all seeds are very healthy for you so and a lot of times we throw them away and we should be eating them. But you can do that with jackfruit seeds. So we want you to be aware of that. But fresh is a delicious option. And they're very sweet. You can just eat them plain and throw them in fruit salad, things like that.
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And it's just absolutely incredible. I can't even describe the flavor it's different from anything else. Do yourself a favor and try it don't buy it if they are if the skin again is brown on the outside look at the backside where the spiky skin is you want it to be at a little bit of a deeper green color. But not not any kind of brown black anything like that and then the free pot should also not look brown because it will taste for a minute and it's really not good that way
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now with the skin we say spiky no we're not talking about penetrate skin spiky because they they're raised up, I don't know, quarter inch, maybe half inch now was cheap, right? It's not it's not a sharp is not like spines on a cactus, nothing of that nature. So we don't want again, since this is not a visual medium and you can't see it. I gotta do go online search a picture and you'll see it you'll know exactly what we're talking about. So you're
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probably wondering how else do we eat the fresh fruit besides just eating it plain or maybe in a fruit salad? Well, you can take the fresh fruit pieces and actually go ahead and cut those up or pull them apart into a basically like a pulled pork shape. You can use the fresh fruit for that. And then you can simmer it down in a pan and then add a homemade barbecue sauce or one that you can find if you can find one that doesn't have a lot of sugar because you want to omit any added sugar because again, the fresh fruit is very sweet on its own. And then once you cook it down in a pan and it gets really tender and it pulls apart like a kind of like a pull pork, then you would bake it off in the oven to dry it out a bit. Put it on your favorite healthy bread or something like that and make or into a taco. It is incredible.
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Chop it with a bunch of thinly sliced cabbages red and green cabbage plus carrots that are been thinly sliced. And then maybe you're just basically making a slaughter chop it with and then squeeze some lime juice on it and you're done. Forget the mayo just put some lime juice on it is amazing. Also, you can take the fresh fruit if you've ever made banana and ice cream, where you just take frozen bananas, blend those up in your blender, your food processor, add some jackfruit in with that it would be amazing.
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Or what about mango salsa. I love having makeup. We haven't done that yet. We haven't thought about that.
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Actually,
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that that would be so good. Now what about I'm also again, I was gonna say we were using mango salsa a lot on our black bean tacos. We love mango salsa, right we top it with that same slaw, why not cut up your jackfruit or pull it apart and make a salsa out of that instead of using mangoes, it's a great way to use up your fresh jackfruit. Then again, you could put it in your breakfast porridge or your oatmeal or add it to chia pudding, that'd be another wonderful way to use fresh jackfruit. But the one thing you want to be sure of is don't let it go bad in your fridge. Again, if you've bought one, it's a whole or a big one or a large amount of a slice.
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You don't want to let that go bad. So when you first get it home, eat what you're going to eat right away, pull the pods out, remove the seeds pull off the tougher skin off that pod.
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And then you can freeze them and they'll say for months and months and months airtight in the freezer, and then you can just pull them out and use them when you want to throw them in your banana and ice cream.
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Again, throw them in your part any of those different ways you can use it once you frozen the fresh fruit, which is a great idea. Now, if you're using them as a meat replacement, you can buy them canned. Now they come in different ways in cans so that they might be in a salty brine. We don't really recommend that but if that's the only way you can find it, rinse those pieces off really well under water before you eat them.
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And then just adjust any salt in the recipe that you're using it accounting for the fact that it's already going to be a little bit salty.
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We recommend not buying them packed in syrup. You can buy them that way but it's not good for you. I mean that's a lot of extra sugar that you just don't need. They're already sweet when they're fresh by nature, but if you buy them canned either packed and salty Bronner and water, guess what, they're no longer sweet. And so then you can use them where you might use like a chunk beef that you'd use in a beef stew, like a stewed beef or something like that. And they have that texture of a pulled pork or stewed beef.
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It also seems like it's anytime we've made chicken in a soup or something how the chicken will kind of pull apart somewhat as well. But it really is such a neutral flavor kind of like what you're talking about.
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It's like a tofu. So it takes on whatever you put in the dish
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not fresh because fresh, it's been in the can absolutely it's not, it's no longer sweet.
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Even if you don't get it salty, and you get it packed in water somehow, it's just not sweet anymore. So the way you're going to prepare that is you'll take it, because it's going to pick up the flavor of anything. But the way to get it to do that.
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And the trick to do that is to first drain the liquid, how are you going to do that, you're going to just pour it into a columnar colander and drain the liquid off over the sink. Next, put it in a clean kitchen towel, squeeze it and ring it and get all the liquid out that you can.
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And then once you've done that, put it into a bowl because now it's going to have this much Meteor texture, because you squeeze that liquid out and it's going to suck those flavors in that you're going to put in your sauces and your spices and things like that. Next, you're going to cut the harder pieces off. Now, at the very tip of the pieces of jackfruit that has been canned, what you're going to find is something like a bit of a core, it's almost like the core of a pineapple, it's a little more tough, and it doesn't really taste like pulled meat, it doesn't have that texture. So what you'll want to do is cut those off where they're really hard. And then you can actually dissect that because you'll end up with quite a bit of jackfruit after you do that, and I don't like to waste it. So you can throw those in your food processor, chop them up real fine and throw them back in as part of the quote meat into your dish. It works really great. Now you can also after you get all that done, boil your jackfruit for about 10 minutes in some water, if you want it softer. If you're going to put it in an instant pot and use it in something like a soup, don't bother boiling it instant pot is going to soften it up for you and it will be amazing. The other thing I want to tell you is that really in the can is going to come again shape like the pineapple keeps pineapple
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in cubes chunks.
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And so remove that core pull, you can kind of pull the jack proofread apart to get that really texture, write the texture that you want. And it's not going to taste like meat straight out of the can. I'm not gonna lie to you, it has a lot to do with the spices and the sauces that you add to it and whatever dish you're making.
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But that's true of meat though, anytime we're looking back, we've made dishes with me, it's primarily the sauces and the spices and herbs that we've put either on the meat or the has come naturally in the meat the way that we bought it
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exactly. So I'll use it in my beef stew that I make in my instant pot. So once I've rinsed it or drained it first and then maybe rinsed it, if it has Brian, I would definitely rinse it. If it didn't, you can rinse it or not, it doesn't matter. And then you're gonna squeeze it out. Once you do that, remove the harder pieces, chop those that by hand into smaller pieces or drop it into your food processor, let it do the work for you. I'm all about that. Put it all back together and in your instant pot with whatever other things you're going to fit into your beefless to you. And it is a great replacement for that it takes up all of those flavors from your vegetables, the veggie stock, whatever else you like and your beefless to you it's wonderful and other soups as well. And I
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was gonna say another favorite of ours is Brunswick steam. It seems to act almost like a chicken replacement. With that
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it does it does well chicken
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and egg and in a frenzy and Anita is if you've ever listened to her story, she said she grew up in a restaurant.
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Well, her father and mother had a restaurant in rural Northwest Georgia. And this was one of the things they were famous for,
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from miles and miles around to eat there. And it was for his Brunswick stew, which was filled with meat. And it was delicious. But we've gotten to where we replace it with the jackfruit. And what do you think about the result? Well,
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my point in all that though, is that, you know, Brunswick stew. Oh yeah, I grew up with your father New Brunswick stew. And so putting the jackfruit in place of the mate. It's, it's incredible.
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It's amazing. Yes, we know it's not chicken. But we love the replacement so much more and the way that we feel after eating it, we feel energized, we don't feel heavy.
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And that's a big thing.
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But the flavors in it are the same.
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The big thing is I feel great after I eat it and I enjoy it just as much. So you want the things that are going to open those doors of possibility for you. We always talk about that.
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It's one of those Yeah, because what is the whole deal and eating this way? Yes, you want foods that you enjoy. It has to be delicious. You got to find those replacements you love but you want to feel great because you have things to do. You're purpose driven woman, you have places to go people to see family to make memories with trips to go on and business opportunities that you want to be able to take advantage of and we can't do that if we're just barely surviving every day. How else we use jackfruit Let me tell you, you can pull it apart and use it as a pulled me tacos or burritos and place a pool chicken. It's great with homemade barbecue sauce. We like that because it doesn't have added oil it doesn't have a lot of ingredients that we can't even pronounce and it doesn't have added sugar. So to make it very quickly, you can use ketchup mustard again with the ketchup cheese, one that doesn't have a ton of added sugar. So ketchup, mustard, some garlic, smoked paprika, onions, maybe even a little vegan Worcestershire sauce and you're good to go. It's delicious. You can bowl that or you can put it with your jackfruit and to the oven and bake it until it dries out just a little bit are pinning them saucepan and cook it together. Then again just top it with everything you normally do for barbecue. You are good to go. We also like using it in curries. And really it's limitless. Just think about how would you use something like a full chicken a pull pork or a stewed beef and you are ready to go with jackfruit those are the biggest tips that we can give you about using jackfruit. Try it out. Let us know what you think. Send in any questions or comments that you have. We've loved having you join us today and we look forward to seeing you next time on smarter healthy living.
