Tender jackfruit is an integral part of our traditional cooking. In our region, we start to consume raw jack in different stages and each developing stage of jack has its own unique traditional recipes and is considered as a delicacy. I have shared many recipes of jackfruit in my blog and it is available in my blog archive or you can find in recipe index as well.
Nowadays, people follow many forms of diets and Jackfruit is used extensively in other parts of the world as well. As a plant-based meat alternative, young jack is considered as a Vegan meat. It suits very well as a vegan meat, due to its fibrous structure and its neutral flavour works very well in cooking savoury dishes and soaks the added flavours.
Tender jackfruit is a super food, which is high in vitamins, minerals and dietary fibers and at the same time, less in calories, salt and fats. Now a day, it is available in almost all parts of the globe as fresh or frozen.
If you get a whole young/ green/ tiny raw jackfruit, what you would do? How to chop? What is the procedure we normally follow? These are the aspects I want to share in this post and I am sure, you would try to use these techniques while chopping the fruit by yourself.
Wanted to include the chopping/ cleaning procedure from a long time, it is tedious to do photography with my latex laden hand while chopping. This post is all thanks to my mother in law, who offered me a helpful hand in chopping, and I grabbed the opportunity to click pictures and the result is here –
First thing is –
- Centre core part of jackfruit contain a sticky, white latex also known as sap. So, before chopping, apply some cooking oil to your hand and the knife that you use.
- We normally use traditional vegetable cutter. in which, half-moon shaped knife fixed into raised wooden plank in which, person sits over and holds the vegetable in both the hands and cuts and moves it against the blade. The sharp edge of the knife will face the user. In this method, large sized vegetables can be handled with ease.
- If you are using the knife or any other material, before cutting – spread a couple of newspapers beneath the work area.
- Keep a couple of tiny pieces of papers ready, it would be handy while removing the latex.
- Take one bowl of water as well.
- Now, take one young jack fruit, make half and slice them to length wise.
- Clean the oozed-out latex by using tiny paper pieces.
- Now remove outer thorny skin as well as inner core.
- It is ready to chop, as per your requirement or the recipe.
- Make pieces as required and put it in a water containing bowl.
- Drain the pieces, discard water and proceed to cook or store it in a zip lock and refrigerate or freeze it.
- Wash your gummy hand by applying little oil once again, rub both the hands and wash it by using normal hand wash.