Fake meat from fruit. I could never have imagined that it was possible, but apparently it really is possible.
First see - and taste -, then believe! So I pulled apart some jackfruit, seasoned and fried. Would it come close to real pulled pork?
Jackfruit:
today.com
It is that I dislike those hysterical clickbait titles, but this was almost a "They pulled this one ingredient apart and you will not believe what happened next" worth it. I saw a few pictures of pulled pork passing by and was slightly shocked when it appeared that this 'meat' was actually jackfruit.
Jackfruit
Jackfruit is a green Asian fruit that can grow up to a meter long and 40 kilos. Not to be confused with the stinking doerian. The ripe flesh is slightly sweet and yellow in color, but the unripe fruit is also eaten as a vegetable. Or apparently as meat.
In our less exotic country you can buy canned jackfruit at the toko. Make sure you buy the young fruit and not the ripe ones and that there is salt water (brine) and no syrup. The young fruit with salt water is much less sweet, does not have much flavor, but does have a particularly meaty structure.
Jackfruit is not like many other meat substitutes rich in protein or iron. In addition to water, there are some carbohydrates, few proteins and even less fat. There is a lot of vitamin B6 (a quarter of your daily requirement per 100 grams) and some vitamin C and potassium.
Making a stew
There are plenty of recipes to be found, but also with a view to a leftover tray of rendang-boemboe from my carnivorous life and a bag of sliced almost-over-date vegetables, I have made some of it myself. Immediately saved some of the food waste again, hurray!
It was not pita bread BBQ pulled pork like in most recipes, but a very easy stew.
Ingredients for 3 people
1 can jackfruit (but you want 2)
Tray rendang-boemboe
Bag of wok vegetables (400 grams)
Stuck potatoes (450 grams)
Prepare
To prepare the jackfruit I followed the instructions of SquatCilla. In other words, drain the fruit and rinse, cut off hard pieces, remove the seeds and pull the flesh apart.
The structure does look a bit like that of pineapple, but then a bit more firm. The pink color that I associate with real meat for the occasion, I find a bit confusing in combination with the slightly sweet smell.
gewoonlekkergroen.nl
Completely on the guess, I have stirred half of the boemboe through the flesh and added a little extra water and olive oil to make the boemboe a bit more 'sauziger' and thus approach the half bottle of barbecue sauce from SquatCilla.
The quarter marinating was extended by an unexpected dinner to 24 hours, but that did not spoil the fun. After baking for 20 minutes at 200 ° C you see that you can seriously fool people with this 'meat'!
In the meantime I have cut the potatoes into large pieces and cooked them and fried the wok vegetables with the other half of the boemboe and some water. After thickening the sauce, I scooped the pieces of potato through the vegetables.
I put the little mess in a bowl and sprinkled the 'meat' over it. A little hipster could just call this a Jackfruit rendang bowl!
I found my inspiration @ zaailingen.com and gewoonlekkergroen.nl