Our Big Fat Jackfruit Adventure

My first experience, face to face, with a jackfruit.  People grow them here, but you don't generally see them in the market.   Well, occasionally in the farmer's market, cut up and wrapped in saran.  This all started when I went with a friend, to a local vegetarian restaurant, an excellent one, by the way - Sweet Cane Cafe - specializing in locally grown, organic  produce, wanting to try the now almost cult fruit, prepared like pulled pork.  The owner said she didn't use jackfruit for that purpose, just ripe ones in smoothies.  So I managed to talk her into selling me a whole, unripe specimen.  Luckily she had just taken delivery on a bunch of them, so I was able to stagger out, with one of the staff helping me to carry it. This is a fruit you don't want falling on your head out in the orchard.

Me negotiating said purchase. The next job was researching how to cut it open, prepare for cooking and use in some recipes. Verizon has told me I'm down to 10% due to excessive data usage.


The fruits are full of sticky, runny latex, so first we place the fruit on a large plastic bag, over a cutting board. Then coat our hands and knife in vegetable oil.  After hacking off less than 1/4 of the fruit I decided that amount was quite enough for the two of us, and shared the rest in two larger sections with friends.  My right shoulder has been giving me some grief, so the cutting process through a tough prickly skin was a bit difficult.

There's our portion in the orange bowl, just out of the pressure cooker and separated from the seeds. That's the "meat" and it does look rather meaty!  The pressure cooker (or your Instant Pot) is the quickest way to cook the fruit, and after cooling down it's much easier to deal with.  The latex now not being a problem.

The seeds are edible and very good as well, a bit like cooked potato.  I used part of them to make hummus and some in the stuffing for a baked avocado. Cooking an avocado - another first for me.

The remainder of my cooked fruit was divided in half.  One portion I seasoned with a BBQ style sauce, and the other with a Teriyaki marinade.  Then, food stashing Hawaiian style, it all went into zip-lock freezer bags (labeled of course) for later use  -  except for enough to top our pizza.

The pizza was great with BBQ sauced jackfruit, mushrooms, and some small orange peppers, then tomato and cheese on top, of course. Very yummy!  I'm planning to make sourdough pita breads today and use some for jackfruit pita sandwiches. Well, I'd still like to try the fruit in it's ripe state.  Supposed to taste a bit like Juicy Fruit gum?

This post will be linked to Beth Fish Reads for her Weekend Cooking event.  You can visit for some good cooking ideas, or join in with a link to your own cooking post.