Breadfruit

[dougiezerts]

Any of you ever tried this unusual fruit grown in the Pacific? And does it really taste like bread? Ever since I first heard about it, when I was in elementary school, I've been curious to try it.
Also, do any of you know of a source on the web where I might be able to order it. A canned variety would be fine. Thanks?

[Mama Mangia]

Breadfruit is part of the mulberry family.

Comes from South East Asia. An important starch staple in the Pacific. Flesh is used in the same way as potato. Large green fruit. Best served as deep fried chips. Can be cooked from frozen. Keeps well.

Like the banana and plantain, the breadfruit may be eaten ripe as a fruit or underripe as a vegetable. For the latter purpose, it is picked while still starchy and is boiled or, in the traditional Pacific Island fashion, roasted in an underground oven on pre-heated rocks. Sometimes it is cored and stuffed with coconut before roasting. Malayans peel firm-ripe fruits, slice the pulp and fry it in syrup or palm sugar until it is crisp and brown. Filipinos enjoy the cooked fruit with coconut and sugar.
Fully ripe fruits, being sweeter, are baked whole with a little water in the pan. Some cooks remove the stem and core before cooking and put butter and sugar in the cavity, and serve with more of the same. Others may serve the baked fruit with butter, salt and pepper. Ripe fruits may be halved or quartered and steamed for 1 or 2 hours and seasoned in the same manner as baked fruits. The steamed fruit is sometimes sliced, rolled in flour and fried in deep fat. In Hawaii, underripe fruits are diced, boiled, and served with butter and sugar, or salt and pepper, or diced and cooked with other vegetables, bacon and milk as a chowder. In the Bahamas, breadfruit soup is made by boiling underripe chunks of breadfruit in water until the liquid begins to thicken, then adding cooked salt pork, chopped onion, white pepper and salt, stirring till thick, then adding milk and butter, straining, adding a bit of sherry and simmering until ready to serve.
The pulp scraped from soft, ripe breadfruits is combined with coconut milk (not coconut water), salt and sugar and baked to make a pudding. A more elaborate dessert is concocted of mashed ripe breadfruit, with butter, 2 beaten eggs, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon and rosewater, a dash of sherry or brandy, blended and boiled. There are numerous other dishes peculiar to different areas. Breadfruit is also candied, or sometimes prepared as a sweet pickle.


Most varieties of breadfruit are purgative if eaten raw. Some varieties are boiled twice and the water thrown away, to avoid unpleasant effects, while there are a few named cultivars that can be safely eaten without cooking.

You can try

SHOPZILLA.COM

To see where you can order it.

[dougiezerts]

Thanks, Mama!

[KYHeirloomer]

I dunno about on line. But Tahiti is always, uh, bountiful. (Sorry about that. )

[Mama Mangia]

Anytime Dougie!!!

[Cook Chatty Cathy]

I had no idea breadfruit was part of the mulberry family!

I only recently learned of bread fruit when I was watching "Mutiny on the Bounty" and that is the 1st time in my life I heard of them, KYH you are so funny!!! Don't be sorry, I loved the play on words with that one
By the way it was a terrific movie [the newer version starring Mel Gibson].