Can you eat jackfruit seeds? I was recently to find that yes you can not only eat jackfruit seeds, but they are freaking awesome. I’ll cover the awesome part later.
Generally speaking I am not a fan of seeds, probably from my many years working and living in China. Watching the effort Chinese people put into getting such tiny reward from a sunflower seed has probably poisoned me subconsciously. The Jackfruit seed is a whole other business though.
How to eat a jackfruit?
I’ll start by saying that jackfruit and durian are very very different! Something you can read about here.
Jackfruit is a weird fruit, sometimes described as a mixture between a banana and a pineapple, but for me I like the whole citrus part. It goes well with soda water for example. You are supposed to eat the flesh and then throw out the pip, or seed. Normal stuff, except I noticed that people would keep the jackfruit seed and leave it out in the sun to dry. Why were they doing this? Because it makes a very interesting snack.
How do you cook jackfruit seeds?
Apparently you can boil them, or you can fry/grill them. It was decided that fried jackfruit seed would be the weapon of choice for this day. They actually take no time at all to fry, or grill and pretty quickly become soft. From here you add some salt and then serve them.
How do you eat jackfruit seeds?
They are served to you on a plate almost like a bar snack, a bunch of hot things that look almost rather too similar to a potato. You are then supposed to peel off the outer skin and, well you eat them. How do they taste? I’ll deal with the taste and indeed the skin in the next part.
How do jackfruit seeds taste?
I was really not expecting anything special, but special is what I got. So, you are supposed to peel off the skin and eat the insides. Unaware of this I ate it whole. Each one was a little bit different, but the consistency and taste was like a mixture between a baked potato, crisps and would you believe it, but a roasted chestnut?
Again you are reportedly not supposed to eat it with the skin, but the skin was fine with me, almost having the consistency of burnt baked potato. The salt though is what makes it and I would love to try it with some Kampot pepper to get a full Khmer experience.
So, can you eat jackfruit seeds? Yes you can and they would make the perfect bar snack.