To All,
When I butchered the jack fruit, I was so overwhelmed by the richness of the experience that I ignored the seeds. Even though I knew that they could be eaten and had drawn admiring comments from Internet experts, I couldn't spare any attention for them and threw them away so I could focus on the fruit proper. Each individual fruit held a seed, and as time passed and I ate fruits and handled the seeds, I noticed how handsome they were. I started to collect them and ended up with thirty-eight seeds, which weighed six ounces. (I figure that the entire jack fruit had maybe two hundred seeds.) It occurred to me that the proper way to complete my worship of the jack fruit was to eat its seeds. One picture below shows two seeds, with the one on the left unpeeled and the one on the right peeled, with a quarter for scale. The other picture shows my bowl of seeds.
I have never roasted, boiled, stewed, or otherwise cooked a seed or nut, so my ignorance of how to proceed was complete. Marvelous to relate, the Internet coughed up a cornucopia of recipes. In a sense, a jack fruit seed it like a little potato. Just as there are many ways to prepare a potato, there is almost endless choice of how to prepare jack fruit seeds. The essence of jack fruit seed cooking is that the seeds are hard, and to make them edible you need to cook them in some way until they are soft. I decided to try boiling, roasting, and stir-frying. The details of how I cooked them are in the appendix to this e-mail for those who are interested; here I will only cover the essentials.
The boiled jack fruit seeds really were like little boiled potatoes. I boiled them, mashed them, dressed them with salsa, and ate them. They were good; pretty much as potatoes would be but with a little more texture It was a nice change of pace to have such tiny potatoes. My attempts at roasting and stir-frying resulted in burning and ruining my seeds.
I estimate that my thirty-eight seeds, if not ruined in cooking, would yield about one and a half midnight snacks.
As seems inevitable, the Internet experts swoon over the nutritional properties of both jack fruit and its seeds.
The verdict: I like the seeds almost as much as the fruit. The drawback is that it takes about half an hour to cook them. This is a lot harder than downing a raw fruit.
Remember, jack fruit seeds are gluten-free.
But wait, there's more. The site http://www.stylecraze.com/articles/benefits-of-jackfruit-seeds-for-skin-hair-and-health/ details many more benefits that the knowing can reap from jack fruit seeds.
- Fights wrinkles: "Take a seed of jackfruit and keep it dipped in cold milk for a while. Grind it well and apply softly on your wrinkles. It is believed to work on wrinkles in just about four-five weeks time. Apply regularly for best results."
- Flawless complexion: "You just need to soak the dry seed with some milk and honey and grind it into a fine paste. Now apply this paste on your face evenly and let it dry completely. Wash it off to get a flawless skin within minutes."
- Anti-cancer nutrients.
- Comfort from indigestion.
- Promotes hair growth.
- And more.
I invite my readers to apply a jack fruit seed beauty mask and to send a picture via Reply All.
After all this, you are probably asking how to grow jack fruit inside your home. The Internet never disappoints; go to http://houseplants.about.com/od/Easy_Plants/p/Jackfruit-how-To-Grow-Jackfruit-Indoors.htm Plan on moving into a bigger house.
If you will be growing your own jack fruit, you will be interested in the properties of its wood. It is yellow with a pleasing grain and is coveted for furniture-making. Let's hope all the jack fruit trees don't all get cut down to make jewelry chests for rich people.
If you watched the video in the previous e-mail, you might have noticed that my machete was not quite long enough to conveniently cut the jack fruit even though this fruit was small by jack fruit standards. This means that to efficiently cut jack fruit, one needs a broadsword.
Here's your party tip. To your next party invite people from many lands. In advance give each person a supply of jack fruit seeds and ask him/her to prepare them as they are cooked in his/her native country and bring this dish to the party. Your guests will then feast on boiled jack fruit seeds, roasted jack fruit seeds, stir-fried jack fruit seeds, jack fruit seed hummus, scalloped jack fruit seeds, refried jack fruit seeds, jack fruit seeds kabob, jack fruit seeds pilaf, jack fruit seeds fondue, jack fruit seeds rancheros, deviled jack fruit seeds, jack fruit seeds foo yung, jack fruit seeds flambe, French fried jack fruit seeds, mock jack fruit seed soup, jack fruit seed chowder, jack fruit seed pancakes, jack fruit seeds a la king, jack fruit seed croquettes, Boston baked jack fruit seeds, stuffed jack fruit seeds (choice of pimento cheese or goat cheese for the stuffing), jack fruit seeds au gratin, jack fruit seeds Alfredo, jack fruit seeds strogonoff, jack fruit seeds a la mode, jack fruit seeds korma, General Gao's jack fruit seeds, jack fruit seeds Wellington, and jack fruit seeds a la orange. This is multiculturalism at its best.
Final party tip: Do not bring out your broadsword.
As we wave good-bye to the jack fruit experience, let's give a tip of the hat to this fruit for all seasons that can not only prevent food wars but also give us glowing complexions. It is time for this fruit to escape the obscurity of the Korean grocery store and be allowed into mainstream super markets. If they can sell sour oranges, surely they can sell jack fruit.
The Fruit Explorer
Appendix on Cooking Jack Fruit Seeds
A jack fruit seed is composed of three layers.
- There is an outer, white, paper-thin covering. This is stiff and must be removed before eating.
- Just under this outer layer there is an inner brown, paper-thin layer. This is edible. There is no reason to remove it unless you for some reason think it unaesthetic. These two layers can be seen in the pictures above.
- The inner, white region is the meat of the the seed. This is edible, but when raw it is hard, harder even than a potato; it must be cooked until it is soft.
While sun-drying my jack fruit seeds, from half of which the outer, white layer had been removed, after several days I found that they started getting little mold spots. The half from which the white outer layer had not been removed seemed to suffer from mold about the same as the half from which the white layer had been removed. I put them in the fridge, and the mold spots did not get any worse. When I went to cook them, I found that it was very easy to scrape the little mold spots off with a knife, whether the white outer layer was present or not. If the mold is on the white, outer layer, then the mold totally disappears when you remove this layer. (I sun dried my seeds because the Internet experts said to. What's so special about sun drying? At any rate, the Internet experts did not mention the mold problem.)
The Internet provided directions for I boiling, roasting, and stir-frying my jack fruit seeds.
A recipe for boiling jack fruit seeds is at http://www.thaitable.com/thai/recipe/boiled-jackfruit-seeds It amounts to boil, peel, and eat. This recipe says that you should leave the white, outer layer on when boiling and remove it before eating. My experiments revealed that the seed was equally edible whether the outer layer was removed before or after boiling. I boiled the seeds for about 30 minutes and then found them to be nice and soft.
Remarks (I wouldn't call them a recipe) on roasting appear at http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=1542.0. I removed the white outer layer, cut the seeds in half to keep them from exploding, and roasted them at 400 for 40 minutes. I neglected to check them while cooking. When I pulled them out, they were literally burned to a crisp and went straight into the trash. Figuring that my technique was the problem, I decided to try again with my reserve batch of seeds. I forgot to cut them in half, but they did not explode. This time I paid attention to the injunction of the Internet experts and tried to turn the seeds over every six or seven minutes. I found that it was hard to tell if I turned them over or not, so all I really did was to shuffle them around and hope that they turned over. After twenty minutes, they were starting to turn crisp on the outside before the interior had softened. In short, ruined. That's sixteen jack fruit seeds down the drain. Maybe 400 is too high. At any rate, screw roasting.
There are numerous recipes for stir-frying, e.g., http://www.cookingandme.com/2013/01/chakkakuru-mezhukkupuratti-kerala-recipe.html, but they were too fancy for me and called for all sorts of Indian spices that I don't have. Therefore, I cut each seed lengthwise into four pieces and stir-fried them in olive oil, garlic, chili powder, salt, and pepper. Again, they burned before turning soft even though I kept the flame low. Screw stir-frying.
All I can testify to is that jack fruit seeds can be successfully cooked by boiling. Perhaps others can figure out other ways to cook them.
P.S. This e-mail inaugurates a new era in that the two pictures above are the first pictures that I have taken with my new camera. Not counting phones, this is the first camera that I have owned. Last week's e-mail also inaugurated a new era in that it contained custom Fruit Explorer pictures and a video; these were taken by someone else. Most of the pictures that you have seen in these e-mails have been taken from the Internet.
P.P.S. Below are more pictures of this august fruit, including a simulated still from the movie "Attack of the Giant Jack Fruit" (alternate title, "The Jack Fruit that Devoured Cleveland." (Unfortunately, Hollywood, afraid to do anything different, refused to green light this movie.) For the second week in a row you see an appearance by the cartoon character JackFruit365, who apparently has the mission of convincing people to eat jack fruit 365 days a year; he needs to curb his enthusiasm while he works on his syntax. You also see a still from a Tom Cruise movie, "The Quest for Jack Fruit."
