Papaya recipes are usually unheard of besides a fruit salad recipe, right? Wrong. You can make a variety of delicious dishes with this fruit even when they're green.
When you can't wait for the papayas to ripen, what do you do? You can't just eat them green, you know... they're just not palatable in that condition. You just have to cook them to make them edible!
Yes, you can cook them.
I know that it's a sacrilege to cook fruits but trust me on this one, this is an exception. Green papayas are not edible unless you cook them. When this fruit is unripe, it releases a white sap that can cause skin irritation if you happen to rub it on your skin. Be careful, you will itch like mad.
Let's go for the Filipino Atsara which is basically translated to pickled green papaya fruit. Filipinos eat this as a side dish. You know, anything pickled is good for gut health.
The recipe for the Filipino Atsara can be found here.
In the Philippines, people cook green papayas all the time. This green fruit is the main ingredient to what they call 'Tinola' as in 'Tinolang Manok', which is basically chicken stew.
But I'm not in favor of Tinola as I am practicing a vegetarian lifestyle. So we'll skip that. Let's discuss something else different and clean. Save the birds. No sacrificing animals here for the sake of taste.
There are other vegetarian delicious green papaya recipes that you can make without sacrificing an animal. I usually cook them in coconut milk because that's how my Mom used to cook them.
Here's a favorite green papaya dish cooked in coconut with other Filipino native vegetables. It makes it even better when the coconut flakes are toasted before the milk is extracted giving it that native smoked flavor. It's totally yummy!
But if you don't feel like making these green papaya recipes, why bother? Just wait for them to be fully ripened to the core and just eat them ripe or just make a fruit salad.
You can't go wrong with a juicy fresh fruit salad. It's totally fool proof. Just mix all your favorite fruits together and dig in. If you're like me, I just eat my papaya as is. It's raw food in it's original form.
Why complicate things?
Growing a papaya fruit tree is really easy if you live in a warm climate. You can eat the fruit ripe and just throw their little black seeds out in the dirt. They're happy like that, they'll grow easily with minimal care.
These trees love a 90 degree weather and occasional showers. Before you know it, you have your very own papaya garden.
So when your papaya trees are loaded with fruits, try some green papaya recipes. They're different and naturally good for you.
New! Comments
Express yourself. Please leave a constructive comment in the box below.