My doctor was pretty serious this time. My yearly physical has often included the phrase “You should cut down on red meat,” but this time he was much more direct, “You need to cut down on red meat.” “Blasphemy,” I thought, with my Homer Simpson-like brain visualizing the big, juicy steak that I’d grill for dinner that night — a celebration of the fact that I’d gotten a physical for the fourth year running. “In fact,” my doctor added, “you should consider cutting red meat out of your diet entirely.” The nerve of this well-educated physician.
Of course, I knew he was right. My cholesterol is higher than the lawn section at a Dave Matthews Band concert and, as such, I’ve been a man of white meat for the past seven months. I cheated with three small steaks during that time, and I keep track of that number because it’s significantly less than “at least one a week.” But it didn’t help enough, as my latest bloodwork came back with grease dripping from it.
“That’s it,” my doctor said, as if he was sitting inside the Pope-mobile, sensing danger. “You’re done with red meat until I tell you otherwise.”
So, what’s a meat-loving guy to do when his favorite meal is ripped away from him by some jerk who is trying to increase his life expectancy? Turns out all you ever really have to do is say that you can’t eat red meat and nutrition “experts” will come running like you just fired the bat signal into the night sky. One brief mention to a fitness-minded friend of mine resulted in: “You should try jackfruit.” Another friend offered me a dozen or so easy fish recipes (which he clearly just copied from Pinterest) before adding: “Also, check out jackfruit.” It was like one of those old movie scenes where I’m lost in a strange city and every neon sign reads, “Jackfruit!”
Some think it’s sweet, while others do indeed liken it to the taste of pulled pork. This is especially true when cooked, and you’ll find it used regularly in the place of pulled pork or chicken in the best vegan cookbooks.
Okay, so what the hell is jackfruit?
The problem with questions as headlines (especially those unintentionally laden with innuendo) is that they’re like inviting vampires into your home. The point of this is self-discovery — in that I’d never heard of jackfruit before people started telling me I had to try it. But once you ask a question like this in this time of Internet Know-It-Alls, you can expect everyone to tell you their version of the truth, in addition to: “Um, excuse me, but jackfruit is only the most important fruit in the world and it’s going to save modern society, thank you very much.”
Having no clue where to find jackfruit or what to do with these big, green, spiky melon-looking things, I called upon Upton’s Naturals founder Daniel Staackmann to give me a crash course in all-things jackfruit. He was much more helpful and personable than a routine Google search, starting with the basics.
Jackfruit is a type of tree that is very well-endowed when it comes to fruit. You’ll know a jackfruit tree when you spot its big, old fruitballs hanging out for the world to see, as if it’s bragging about having the biggest fruit of any tree. Impressively, a single jackfruit can grow to be 100 pounds, and it has plenty of uses. When ripe, the yellowish jackfruit’s taste is comparable to “pear, pineapple, banana and papaya,” but I’m here to talk about the unripe stuff, which supposedly tastes like pulled pork or chicken. Fruit that tastes like meat? I’m taking crazy pills!
Staackmann’s company claims to be “the first company to make pre-seasoned, heat-and-serve, natural jackfruit nationally available to the U.S. market.” That’s certainly better than “Try our jackfruit if you dare!” — so I decided to take the plunge. First, though, I needed more history on this supposedly popular fruit, like…
Where does jackfruit come from?
When it came time to find my own big green fruit, all signs pointed to my local Vietnamese grocer, as Staackmann told me that jackfruit is quite popular in Southeast Asian cuisine. If you want to go all the way back to the roots of this fruit (to use what I’m calling the best-food-pun-of-2016), turn to India, where jackfruit has been around for as many as 6,000 years. At the very least, the Indian Vegan offers, Buddhist texts show that jackfruit was a favorite as early as 400 BC. Today, it is grown throughout Southeast Asia and even Brazil.
“The first time that I had jackfruit as a savory dish, it was at a Nepalese restaurant in a curry,” Staackmann recalled. “I really liked it, thought it was really interesting, and I started doing some research. People were talking about doing BBQ and tacos, essentially, and the only way you could get that product was in a can at a specialty food store. Most of the time those would have preservatives in them, and you have to take it home and cook it down for one to three hours. Which, you know, when you want a sandwich, you don’t want to screw around for hours. You want to heat it up and be done with it. We thought it would be great if we could be the first to market something that was ready to eat, jackfruit that is pre-seasoned, so we can eliminate all of the hassle.”
That explains the Upton’s origin story, but trying to pinpoint the rise of jackfruit in the U.S. is a little more tricky. In 2014, NPR reported that there was a new effort to promote jackfruit and the similar (but boringly-named) breadfruit throughout the world as a wonder food — to help countries facing food insecurity. Because an individual jackfruit is so large, a lot of it goes wasted, and so the belief is that countries and people who are in need of more food can take advantage of the size and feed more mouths.
As far as attention from mainstream food obsessives, jackfruit’s profile has blown up significantly in 2016, as companies like Upton’s and The Jackfruit Company are promoting the food not only for its versatility, but also its deliciousness as a meat alternative. (Because of that, it’s safe to assume that vegans have been dining on jackfruit for much longer than it’s been in the news cycle.)
We tried jackfruit — the huge tree fruit that supposedly tastes like pulled pork
FAQ
What type of meat does jackfruit taste like?
What does jackfruit taste similar to?
Can jackfruit replace meat?
Is jackfruit BBQ good?