Healthy food Vegetarian steaks made from jackfruit

Versatile in the vegetarian kitchen

The jackfruit is the new meat substitute in the veggie scene. The unripe pulp has a juicy and fibrous texture reminiscent of chicken breasts. In American restaurants, the Exotin is already delicately flavored as a steak, burger, served in a barbecue sandwich or in curries. When ripe, it is very sweet and tastes in jam or fruit salad. In parts of Asia, jackfruit was once a staple food. Even the seeds are edible and are dried and lightly salted as a snack.

The jackfruit tree (Artocarpus heterophyllus) belongs to the botanical family of the mulberry family and is native to the rainforests of the Near East. Today the tree is cultivated among others in Sri Lanka, South China, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia. The fruits are irregular shaped, have pointed pimples on the shell and are very large. They are usually 30 to 50 cm long and 5 to 30 kg heavy. Due to the high weight, they usually hang near the trunk.

Inside the fruit are numerous hexagonal single fruits with large seeds. While the unripe jackfruit has hardly any taste, the ripe pulp reminds of a mixture of pineapple, mango and banana. In addition, it contains plenty of carbohydrates, minerals such as potassium, calcium, phosphorus and iron, B vitamins, some provitamin A and vitamin C..

Look for an intact shell when shopping. A ripe fruit should yield slightly to gentle pressure and produce a dull sound when tapped. Before eating, she is halved with a heavy knife. The jackfruit contains a sticky milk sap, so the knife is best greased with some vegetable oil before cutting. Then remove the small individual fruits and remove the outer skin. If you do not want to eat all the fruit in one day, you only partially open the bowl. The remaining fruit is wrapped in plastic wrap and stored in the refrigerator. In Asiashops and on the Internet, the jackfruit is also available in cans. For this, the unripe fruit is peeled, gutted, cut into pieces and placed in salt water. The "vegetable meat" is also shrink-wrapped and seasoned with various sauces. Heike Kreutz, aid