The Down & Dirty of Jackfruit

-Make sure to coat your hands and the knife with cooking oil like canola to keep from getting sticky. The residue is hard to remove later if you don’t keep up with the oil. I like to pour about a half to a cup of oil into a bowl and use a silicone brush. Keep reapplying to hands and knife. The knife handle will get slippery so cut carefully.

-Cover the cutting board and any surface the jackfruit will touch with newspaper to keep the sap or latex off.

-Cut the jackfruit in half lengthwise to expose the fruit pods and seeds. If you need to cut the fruit in half widthwise first and then lengthwise that’s fine. Cut again lengthwise until you have 4-8 slices.

-Cut out the white core running lengthwise along the fruit and dispose. Now bend the slices inside out, like you would a mango. See our post for How To Cut A Mango for more details. By bending the slices backward, the white stringy things reveal the yellow fruit pods and the brown seeds.

Toss the skin but keep the white stringy threads, these are what you use for the "vegan pulled pork".  You may have to dig your hands in and rip the fruit pods off of the threads, I had to use a small knife a couple of times to get the pods to release from the slices.

-Slice the pods in half if necessary, to get the brown seeds out.  The seeds are edible if you go through a fairly laborious process.........which is why I'm not explaining here, I didn't have the patience!  I tossed the seeds.

-The fruit pods can be eaten raw or whirred in a blender for an addition to smoothies.  They have a very mild, fruity flavor.

-Or for the vegan "pulled pork" take the easy way out and just buy canned jackfruit from the get go. But don’t buy it in the syrup, rather in brine or water.

-It was fun buying the fresh fruit to experiment, but next time I will definitely go the canned jackfruit route!